Episode 5 - Nerds vs Narcos

Summary

Hot Money: Agent of Chaos – Episode 5: Nerds vs Narcos

Introduction

In Episode 5 of Hot Money: Agent of Chaos, titled "Nerds vs Narcos," reporter Miles Johnson delves deeper into the tangled web of international organized crime, espionage, and high-tech investigations surrounding the enigmatic figure Jan Marsalek. This episode intricately weaves together the stories of crime reporters, law enforcement officials, and politicians as they navigate the dangerous intersections of technology and criminal enterprise.

---

The Dublin Safe House and the Kinahan Cartel

Recap and Setting the Scene

The episode opens with a flashback to April 2016 in Dublin's Lower Baggot Street, a picturesque area deceptive in revealing its nefarious activities. Irish detectives, tipped off about a suspected Kinahan cartel safe house, are met with an unexpected discovery.

Encounter with Seamus Boland

Upon entering, they find Seamus Boland, the chief superintendent in the Irish police, who was arrested for possession of false documents. Boland remarks on the confusion surrounding his identity:

Seamus Boland (03:39): "You know, here's this guy who had a number of identities."

The Murder Broker Unveiled

This individual is identified as a top enforcer for the Kinahan cartel, implicated in a high-profile contract killing of Ali Mutamid, a man on the run from the Iranian regime. Johnson highlights the complexity of this case:

Miles Johnson (04:15): "How did a Dutch criminal working with a cocaine super cartel get mixed up in a murder that seems to have been ordered by Iran?"

---

Paul Wirks: The Targeted Crime Reporter

Introduction to Paul Wirks

Paul Wirks, a seasoned crime reporter known for his unconventional methods, becomes the focal point as his investigative reporting places him directly in the crosshairs of dangerous criminals.

Receiving Threats

After uncovering connections between recent gangland killings and the criminal underworld, Paul receives ominous threats:

Paul Wirks (06:09): "The first five weeks I didn't tell anyone. I didn't even tell my girlfriend I was trying to get the heat away."

Balancing Independence and Safety

Paul grapples with maintaining journalistic integrity while ensuring his safety. He decides to confront his threats directly:

Paul Wirks (08:23): "That's the same the police will do if they know about a plan to kill someone. They'll go to the guys involved and ring the door and tell them, we know what you're up to. Don't."

Living in a Golden Cage

Compelled to relocate to a secure location, Paul describes his new life:

Paul Wirks (09:38): "A very luxurious place, much more luxurious than our normal apartment. And I was transported like the King... but it was like a golden cage because I couldn't get out."

Escalation of Violence Against Journalists

The situation intensifies when criminals attack a Dutch magazine's offices with a rocket launcher, signaling that journalists are now legitimate targets.

Miles Johnson (10:21): "Journalists are now fair game. And if you choose to report on us, you're choosing to put your life in danger."

---

Martin Engbert and the High-Tech Crime Battle

Introducing Martin Engbert

Martin Engbert, the Dutch public prosecutor for high-tech crime, emerges as a pivotal character attempting to combat the sophisticated methods of organized crime.

The Challenge of Encrypted Communications

Engbert explains the dilemma posed by encrypted phones used by criminals:

Martin Engbert (14:06): "They don't have a camera, the camera is removed. They don't have a microphone, the microphone is removed."

Legal and Technical Hurdles

Facing a legal impasse, Engbert strategizes to target the phone manufacturer, Enetcom, to gain access to crucial data.

Martin Engbert (15:58): "We convinced the Canadian judge that there would be evidence on those servers proving that Enetcom was supplying telephones to criminals."

Breakthrough and Setback

While Engbert's team manages to obtain six terabytes of encrypted data from Canada, they encounter significant obstacles:

Martin Engbert (16:17): "We copied six terabytes, which seemed a lot of data... but it's all encrypted."

Cracking the Encryption

After relentless effort, the team successfully brute-forces the password, accessing the encrypted messages and uncovering a wealth of criminal communications.

Martin Engbert (17:30): "And we brute forced the password. So we tried a lot of passwords and eventually we were able to break the password of the key surface server."

Impact on Organized Crime

The revelation sends shockwaves through the criminal underworld, as Engbert boldly notifies Enetcom users of the police intervention:

Martin Engbert (18:14): "We sent out a message to all the users of Anetcom... we know what you're up to. Don't."

---

Ulase Elian: Pursuing Justice Against Powerful Adversaries

Ulase Elian's Quest

Ulase Elian, introduced in Episode 1, is a local councillor determined to seek justice for Ali Mutamid's murder, which he believes was orchestrated by the Iranian regime.

Facing Skepticism and Intimidation

Despite lack of initial support, Ulase persists in raising awareness, leading to tangible governmental acknowledgment of Iran's involvement.

Ulase Elian (21:33): "What is the implication for them? The key message from the regime, it's a message to all of Europe. We're going to find you."

Confrontation and Protection

After facing legal intimidation from Knopel's lawyer, Ulase is placed under police protection but refuses to be silenced:

Ulase Elian (26:11): "This is pure intimidation... modern form of intimidation."

---

Connecting the Dots: The Super Cartel and International Espionage

Miles Johnson meticulously connects the intricate threads between the Kinahan cartel, high-tech crime operations, and international espionage involving Iranian interests. The episode underscores the seamless integration of advanced technology in orchestrating and concealing criminal activities across borders.

---

Conclusion and Foreshadowing

Episode 5 culminates with a promising yet precarious advance in the battle against organized crime, as high-tech investigations begin to unveil the hidden machinations of global criminal networks. The persistent efforts of individuals like Paul Wirks, Martin Engbert, and Ulase Elian highlight the ongoing struggle to bring transparency and justice amidst formidable adversaries.

Miles Johnson (28:09): "We had connections to the military, which caused her to open the door for us."

As the episode closes, listeners are left anticipating the next developments in this high-stakes investigation, hinting at deeper revelations and intensified confrontations in the battle between nerds and narcos.

---

Notable Quotes

• Seamus Boland (03:39): "You know, here's this guy who had a number of identities."
• Miles Johnson (04:15): "How did a Dutch criminal working with a cocaine super cartel get mixed up in a murder that seems to have been ordered by Iran?"
• Paul Wirks (06:09): "The first five weeks I didn't tell anyone. I didn't even tell my girlfriend I was trying to get the heat away."
• Paul Wirks (08:23): "That's the same the police will do if they know about a plan to kill someone. They'll go to the guys involved and ring the door and tell them, we know what you're up to. Don't."
• Paul Wirks (09:38): "A very luxurious place, much more luxurious than our normal apartment... it was like a golden cage because I couldn't get out."
• Martin Engbert (14:06): "They don't have a camera, the camera is removed. They don't have a microphone, the microphone is removed."
• Martin Engbert (17:30): "And we brute forced the password. So we tried a lot of passwords and eventually we were able to break the password of the key surface server."
• Martin Engbert (18:14): "We sent out a message to all the users of Anetcom... we know what you're up to. Don't."
• Ulase Elian (26:11): "This is pure intimidation... modern form of intimidation."

---

Final Notes

Hot Money: Agent of Chaos continues to unravel the complex interplay between technology, organized crime, and international espionage. Episode 5, "Nerds vs Narcos," not only advances the overarching narrative but also sets the stage for future episodes to explore the profound implications of high-tech investigations on global criminal networks.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Foreign.

[Advertiser]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Narrator]

In business they say you can have better, cheaper or faster, but you only get to pick two. What if you could have all three at the same time? That's exactly what Cohere, Thompson, Reuters and Specialized Bikes have since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database, application development and AI needs where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment and spend less than you would with other clouds. How is it faster? OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second cheaper. OCI costs up to 50% less for computing, 70% less for storage and and 80% less for networking better. In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads right now with zero commitment. Try OCI for free. Head to oracle.com strategic that's oracle.com strategic.

[Advertiser]

These days I can do anything from my phone book, a vacation, order a meal from a five star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But but maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app [e-mail], a Rinse valet comes to get my clothes and before I know it, they're back, crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning which is returned hanging in a nice rinse garment bag. And with Rinse my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll reclean my clothes for free. Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember there's an app for that rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com that's R I N S E dot com just.

[Podcast Host]

A quick note before we start today's show. You can listen to Hot the new Narcos ad free by becoming a Pushkin plus subscriber. Find Pushkin plus on the Hot Money show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin FM plus with your subscription. You'll also get access to ad free binge opportunities from Malcolm Gladwell's revisionist history, the Happiness Lab from Dr. Laurie Santos, and tons of other top shows in the Pushkin Network. Sign up in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin FM plus.

[Miles Johnson]

Previously on Hot Money. We discovered how Dubai became the perfect place for the super cartel to come together. This time I want to take you back to Dublin, to Lower Baggot Street. It's a smart neighborhood, close to the city centre, filled with grand Georgian houses. It's April 2016 and Irish detectives have received a tip off. One of the apartments on the street is a Kinahan cartel safe house. But when they get there, they find someone else. A guy with a big belly, speaking broken English. He's got some designer shoes, a bunch of fancy watches and several IDs, each with a different name.

[Seamus Boland]

You know, here's this guy who had a number of identities.

[Miles Johnson]

Seamus Boland, chief superintendent in the Irish police.

[Seamus Boland]

He was arrested for possession of false documents and there was no certainty about his identity at all. It's following his arrest and us issuing an assistance request across Europe that within a number of hours the Dutch police were in touch with us and they identified him from the photographs and fingerprints. And senior Dutch police officers boarded a plane immediately and flew to Dublin.

[Miles Johnson]

The Dutch police scramble to get to Ireland because the man they find in the flat is a murder broker who's a top enforcer for members of the super cartel. He's the one who police suspect arranged the murder we heard about in episode one, a contract killing taken out on a man hiding from the Iranian regime and living undercover in Almere. Ali Mutamid. When I heard about this, I first started to see what Ali Muhammad's death might reveal about the transformation of international organized crime. Because it raised a big question. How did a Dutch criminal working with a cocaine super cartel get mixed up in a murder that seems to have been ordered by Iran? At this stage, no one can prove the link to Iran. We still don't know who gave the murder broker his orders. There's no smoking gun, but something is quietly happening in a high tech unit of the Dutch police that's about to blow the case wide open. It's the start of something huge. A breakthrough that will make the global criminal underworld shudder. I'm Mars Johnson and this is Hot Money. The new Narcos. Episode 5 Nerds vs Narcos Last Time we heard about how the super cartel are ramping up their operations from Dubai. European police can't touch them there and their huge criminal operations back home are booming. In the Netherlands. The ripples have started to reach Paul Wirks.

[Paul Wirks]

The first five weeks I didn't tell anyone. I didn't Even tell my girlfriend I was trying to get the heat away.

[Miles Johnson]

Remember Paul? He's the crime reporter with the leather jacket and the gold hoop earring. The guy who likes to meet with gangsters in public places like bars and coffee shops. It's Paul who broke the news that the electrician killed in Almer was actually a man on the run from the Iranian regime. But one day, Paul gets a different kind of tip from a source, and this one's about him. He hears that a group of criminals started to talk about him. They think he's got information, information that links them to several recent gangland killings.

[Paul Wirks]

So they decided to have me assassinated so that my information could not reach the news or the police.

[Miles Johnson]

I was pretty stunned when I found out about the threats to Paul's life. I've worked in Italy and I've written about the Italian mafia. I've spent time with state prosecutors living under police protection and reporters who fear for their lives. But a reporter hasn't been killed in Italy for many years, and neither has a judge. Now, in the Netherlands, one of the richest and most politically stable countries in the world, organized crime seemed to be out of control. More and more murders were happening as the top kingpins tightened their grip on the drugs market. And Paul's reporting on it. It landed a target on his back. At first, he doesn't tell anyone. He just keeps trying to figure out.

[Paul Wirks]

What'S going on day by day, week by week. The source provided new information, so Paul's.

[Miles Johnson]

Able to keep safe from for now. But there's a limit to how long he can go on like this.

[Paul Wirks]

I didn't talk to the police about it.

[Miles Johnson]

And he faces a dilemma. If he tells the police he knows, he won't be able to do his work. Understandably, criminals aren't so keen on meeting a reporter with a police escort.

[Paul Wirks]

As a journalist, I need to stay independent. It's one of my weapons.

[Miles Johnson]

But he chooses to make a bold move. He reaches out to the criminals directly, the ones who are after him. He sends him a message through an intermediary and tells them he knows about the threats.

[Paul Wirks]

That's the same the police will do if they know about a plan to kill someone. They'll go to the guys involved and ring the door and tell them, we know what you're up to. Don't.

[Miles Johnson]

It's not long before Dutch law enforcement also finds out about the threats. And one of Paul's police contacts calls him up.

[Paul Wirks]

He told me, paul, very bad information, but we need to meet now. So I Told him, let's go to my house, I'll arrange some coffee and cookies. And then we'll be having an uncomfortable discussion because you are not going to tell me what you know in detail. And I won't tell you what I know in detail.

[Miles Johnson]

Paul and the policeman sit down and have a chat over coffee and cookies, which is possibly the most Dutch response you can imagine to any situation. And it quickly becomes clear. Their information matches up.

[Paul Wirks]

And then all kinds of other people from the government got involved.

[Miles Johnson]

He tries to keep working, but it becomes clear that the people who are after him, they haven't given up.

[Paul Wirks]

And then one day it was clear that if we wouldn't leave now, we would not be safe anymore.

[Miles Johnson]

Paul and his girlfriend now race to pack their bags because they've been told they have to move to a safe.

[Paul Wirks]

House, a very luxurious place, much more luxurious than our normal apartment. And I was transported like the King, quite literally because the same organization that secured me secures the King. So I was in a luxury, but it was like a golden cage because I couldn't get out, I couldn't get anywhere without a group of people, well trained, well armed people around me. That's a weird way to live and a weird way to do your job. But they made it possible for me to work. There hasn't been one day I've not been working because of this.

[Miles Johnson]

And it's not just the threats against Paul. Really crazy things start to happen. Criminals fire a rocket launcher at the offices of a Dutch magazine that's been running stories about drugs, traffickers. No one is hurt, but the message is very clear. Journalists are now fair game. And if you choose to report on us, you're choosing to put your life in danger. It's sort of like Paul and his colleagues aren't just crime journalists anymore. They're on the front line covering a full blown attack on Dutch society and the men behind it all. They aren't even in the Netherlands. They're in Dubai, living the high life and far out the reach of law enforcement. But police are about to make a breakthrough that will change everything.

[Advertiser]

These days I can do anything from my phone book, a vacation order, a meal from a five star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app [e-mail], a Rinse valet comes to get my clothes. And before I know it, they're back, crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice rinse garment bag. And with rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll reclean my clothes for free. Because best of all, rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember there's an app for that rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com that's R I N S E.com you just realized.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com podkatz13 just go to Indeed.com podkatz13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Martin Engbert]

I really got enthusiastic on that day.

[Miles Johnson]

Hearing the Panic Take a moment to imagine someone who strikes terror into the hearts of the world's most murderous criminals. And I can guarantee you're not picturing Martin Engbert. Martin's slight and softly spoken, thoughtful. He has a bit of the air of a tech guy, a Silicon Valley blue sky thinker in a Steve Jobs style black turtleneck. Martin is the Dutch public prosecutor for high tech crime. In 2017, he and his team are working on a secret project, one that will turn him into a sort of nerdy Batman. It all starts when Dutch police notice a new gadget showing up on the bodies of murdered gang members. They all seem to be carrying a particular and peculiar type of cell phone.

[Martin Engbert]

They don't have a camera, the camera is removed. They don't have a microphone, the microphone is removed.

[Miles Johnson]

These phones are useless for calls, and they're only good for messaging. And the phone's service runs through specialized companies that offer a particular promise to their clients.

[Martin Engbert]

They advertise police cannot break the encryption on the phones.

[Miles Johnson]

Back in the days before Encrypted messages. If criminals were smart, they would meet face to face. And if they were stupid, they'd speak on the phone.

[Martin Engbert]

Now, I don't want to say famous, but we are well known for wiretapping. But organized crime groups know that. So the organized crime groups in the Netherlands, they don't talk about anything on the phone themselves anymore.

[Miles Johnson]

Technology disrupts every business sector, and drug trafficking is no different. These cryptophones transformed the way people run organized crime groups. You don't need to be in the same city anymore to send an order to an underling. You don't even need to be in the same country. You can now run a vast and complex drug trafficking empire from Dubai without ever getting your hands dirty. You can connect with suppliers, you can manage your finances, and most importantly, you can order murders. And the police have almost no way of seeing what you're up to. Martin and his colleagues are determined to figure out a way to crack these phones. But they're sort of stuck in a legal catch 22. Martin is certain that the phones are being used by organized criminals, but he can't prove it without access to the messages. And to get access, he needs proof that they really are being used for crime. So he comes up with a solution. Don't go after the criminals, go after the phone company. Most of the phones are made by a small Dutch supplier called Enetcom, and most of their servers are in Canada.

[Martin Engbert]

We convinced the Canadian judge that there would be evidence on those servers proving that Enetcom was supplying telephones to criminals.

[Miles Johnson]

So one morning, after getting permission from a judge, a team from Martin's office get on a flight from Amsterdam to Canada.

[Martin Engbert]

I remember a lot of details of the day we went to Canada. We copied six terabyte, which seemed a lot of data. So everybody was really excited because you think we have six terabytes of emails, which would be billions of messages.

[Miles Johnson]

It's a potentially huge breakthrough, a treasure trove of information and evidence. But it's all encrypted. There are layers and layers of passwords and digital keys. And even if they do crack the encryption, Martin has another problem.

[Martin Engbert]

Enetcom tried to delete all the information of their clients after two or three days. So you receive an email, you read the email, you do nothing with the email, and then after two or three days, it will self delete.

[Miles Johnson]

The hackers on the high tech team get to work. They grind late into the night, trying to break the encryption on the messages. There's a lot of trial and error. First, the team have to crack the master password. And to do that they have to try millions of passwords, millions of combinations. It takes months.

[Martin Engbert]

And we brute forced the password. So we tried a lot of passwords and eventually we were able to break the password of the key surface server. And by doing that we were able to use the private keys. And if you have the private keys and you have the encrypted messages, then it's easy.

[Miles Johnson]

Martin and his colleagues have prized open a vault of evidence about what's really going on inside European organized crime. They can see how conspiracies unfolded minute by minute through strings of chats between gangsters. To really set the cat amongst the pigeons, Martin's team added a little flourish, a sort of middle finger to the criminals.

[Martin Engbert]

We sent out a message to all the users of Anetcom. We told them the police is now in Canada securing all the information of your phones. And we heard the panic. So in the Netherlands, the panic within organized crime groups started on that day.

[Miles Johnson]

I've talked about the glimpses we sometimes get of organized crime and this, it was like turning on a floodlight. It sends shockwaves through the criminal underworld. But it's about to get even worse for them. Martin's team soon figure out a way to recover the deleted messages, the ones that Netcom and its users believed were gone forever. And suddenly, a once hidden universe of crime, of alliances and global connections is.

[Martin Engbert]

Illuminated a lot more information about assassinations and about the importation of drugs.

[Miles Johnson]

But for Martin, there's something even more shocking. Reading through the messages, the police suddenly see how easy it's become to order murders using these phones. A crime boss can order a contract killing as easily as they would order a pizza.

[Martin Engbert]

In the Netherlands, there were multiple groups that you could hire to assassinate someone. My work is high tech crime. So for me it was really strange to see that there wasn't one group or multiple groups that you could hire to kill someone.

[Miles Johnson]

And buried inside the millions of messages on the Netcom servers is one brief conversation from November 2015. It's a set of simple and chilling instructions sent from one user to another. The first message reads, Got a nice job for you, bro. The response? Who needs to go to sleep? Then it's a Turk. He works in the electricity company and drives a white van. Why he has to go to sleep, I don't know and I don't even want to know.

[Advertiser]

These days I can do anything from my phone book a vacation, order a meal from a five star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the Most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app [e-mail] and a rinse valet comes to get my clothes and before I know it, they're back, crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice rinse garment bag. And with rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll reclean my clothes for free. Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember there's an app for that rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at rinse.com that's R I N S E dot com.

[Ulase Elian]

Every murder case deserves a solution. And you know, people should be brought to justice in trial. But a foreign government, especially countries, dictatorships, order killings in another western country. You know, this is a thing.

[Miles Johnson]

We met Ulace Elian in episode one. He's the local councillor and almayer the Dutch town where Ali Mutamid was murdered. And thanks to Paul's reporting, Ulise now knows that the electrician was in fact a man on the run from the Iranian regime. He also knows that the people who pulled the trigger were Dutch criminals. But he still doesn't know who gave them orders, who hired them. Ulase has a strong theory, though. He thinks it has to be the Iranian regime, the same regime that forced his father to flee Iran decades before. But he can't prove it. So Ulise does everything he can to raise awareness of the murder. He lobbies local politicians. He starts doing radio and TV interviews about it, including with the Dutch state broadcaster nos.

[Ulase Elian]

So I was like, okay, things are moving in the right direction. I'm getting attention for this very important murder case.

[Miles Johnson]

You were kind of going out a little bit on your own, saying something which sounds like a crazy story, you know, as you say, it's crazy.

[Ulase Elian]

Yeah, it is, it is.

[Miles Johnson]

And so was anyone saying, you're wrong or where's the proof?

[Ulase Elian]

You know, the weird thing in politics is the. The official response you get, it's like, we won't tell you anything about an individual case. We don't know. There's no information. Don't bother. I was like, I'm not going to take that for an answer.

[Miles Johnson]

Because for Ulase, this is about a lot more than just one murder.

[Ulase Elian]

If this is true, what is the implication for Iranian people living in the west who fled the country and are speaking out? What's the implication for them? The key message from the regime, It's a message to all of Europe. We're going to find you. Because, you know, let me emphasize this once more. This guy, they were looking for him for 35 years.

[Miles Johnson]

So after all of this, you were going on tv, you were giving interviews, you were pressing the importance of this case and what you thought, what you believed based on your evidence and your thinking about it, what you thought really was the case. And then in 2019, suddenly, boom, boom. Ulise was shouting about the Mutamid murder to anyone who would listen. He'd lobbied his local mayor, the police, even national politicians, and no one gave him answers. It felt like he was banging his head against a brick wall. And then one day, and I was.

[Ulase Elian]

In my office working, and then, boom. My telephone, like, exploded. Like, boom. These push messages. And I was like, finally, we're doing something back to the regime, showing like, okay, don't do this.

[Miles Johnson]

The Dutch foreign minister has announced that based on classified information from the Dutch intelligence services, the government believes that Iran was responsible for the Muhammad murder and another murder as well.

[Ulase Elian]

I remember his words were like, for 99%, for sure, we know that the Iranians did this. It was, of course, because formally the minister could not conclude officially it was the Iranians, but it was like 99%, we know we expelled them.

[Miles Johnson]

The expulsion of diplomats. It might sound, well, a bit diplomatic, a slap on the wrist. But in foreign relations, this is a big deal, a rare move. And for Ulace, it's his own country finally agreeing that he was right all along. The people behind Mutamid's murder were in Tehran.

[Ulase Elian]

These are important moments. But then this quite rapidly changed to something. Something ugly for me when Unese does.

[Miles Johnson]

Another round of news interviews linking Tehran to the Mutamid murder and to the murder broker known as Knopel. Knopel is not happy. And even though he's in prison awaiting trial, he finds a way to let Ula say know about it. A lawyer working for Mr. Naouful Fassi, that's Knopfil's full name, files a legal complaint against Ulase. He says he's abusing his position and making false allegations about his client's connections to Iran.

[Ulase Elian]

And I remember, you know, I'm sure you can relate this feeling. Sometimes, unfortunately, this happens in life. You get really cold. And you feel the energy flowing from your head to your. It just drains your energy. And I got really cold and I was like, okay, I know who Mr. Fassi is. It was clear. For me, this is pure intimidation. Like, you know, 15 years ago, people threw a rock at your window. This is the modern form of intimidation. We know who you are. Stop talking about this connection.

[Miles Johnson]

Ulise tells the Dutch security services about the letter. They decide that his life and his family are in danger. So Ulise, just like Paul and like his own father decades before, is now put under police protection.

[Ulase Elian]

Yeah, but then they made one mistake. They didn't study my character or my family history. So I immediately went out publicly and said, I will not be intimidated. Go to hell. I will never be intimidated.

[Miles Johnson]

Ulise isn't shutting up because he still has too many questions about the murder. He knows that now for Fassi. Knopel was found in a Kinahan safe house in Dublin and that Knopel was the one who arranged for Ali Mutamid to be murdered. And now he knows that the Dutch government believes it was Iran who was ultimately behind the assassination.

[Ulase Elian]

But someone spoke to Mr. Fassi. I don't know who. It's not like someone from tehran is calling Mr. Fassi. That's not how things work.

[Miles Johnson]

So how do things work? The super cartel seems to be connected to this murder. But what does that connection mean? What links these two things together? As I was looking into all of this, pulling on threads, I came across a case that might help us begin.

[Ulase Elian]

To understand somehow we had established our credibility. At that point, she already knew we were high level drug traffickers, probably multi ton. We had connections to the military, which caused her to open the door for us.

[Miles Johnson]

That's next time on Hot Money. Hot Money is a production of the Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was written and reported by me, Miles Johnson. If you've got any leads or information about this story, you can email [e-mail] the series producer is Peggy Sutton. Edith Rousselot is the associate producer. Fact checking is by Arthur Gompertz. Engineering is by Sarah Bruger. Sound design from Jake Gorski. Jeremy Warmsley wrote the original music. Our editor is Sarah Nix and the executive producers are Jacob Goldstein and Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Laura Clark, Marsha Walraven, Alistair Mackey, Breen Turner and Arlie Adlington.

[Advertiser]

These days I can do anything from my phone book. A vacation, order a meal from a five star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app [e-mail], a Rinse valet comes to get my clothes and before I know it they're back crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning which is returned hanging in a nice rinse garment bag. And with rince my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll reclean my clothes for free. Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember there's an app for that rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first [e-mail] that's R I N S E.com this is an iHeart podcast.