An Armenian court has sentenced Rafal Zelbert, a Polish national arrested at Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport on November 15, 2015 for attempting to smuggle 13 kilograms of cocaine into the country, to fifteen years’ imprisonment.

The cocaine, concealed in Zelbert’s luggage, had an estimated street value of US$4 million.

Zelbert, who arrived in Yerevan on a flight emanating from Sao Paulo vis Dubai, tried to pass through the ‘nothing to declare’ customs exit.

During the investigation, Zelbert, 31, confessed to the drug smuggling charges. He will not appeal the fifteen-year sentence.

Two documents provided by the Interpol office in Armenia confirmed that Zelbert was a member of a Polish-Nigerian organization involved in drug trafficking in various European countries.

In 2011, according to Interpol, Zelbert was arrested at the Malta airport for drug smuggling. According to the Maltese court registry, Zelbert was charged with smuggling 443.69 grams of cocaine and a diazepam-like tranquilizer drug and sentenced to 4.5 years. In 2015, he was arrested again on suspicion of trafficking more than 20 times that amount of drugs.

In his testimony, Zelbert said he was turned on to the idea of cocaine smuggling by Emilio Perez, a Brazilian friend he met while living in Holland.

Perez had told Zelbert that high-grade cocaine could be obtained in Brazil for $2,000 per kilo, and that lower grade cocaine was going for $1,000 per kilo.

The street price in Holland for a kilo was 35,000-60,000 Euros. It seemed like a no-brainer and Zelbert decided to travel to Brazil and bring the drugs to Holland.

Zelbert decided to return to Holland via Yerevan because, as he stated in his testimony, “it was convenient.”

Before being arrested in November, Zelbert had made another trip to Yerevan in May. He remembers arriving at Zvartnots Airport from Brazil and then purchasing a ticket to Prague via Kiev. He was headed to Europe within two hours after arriving in Armenia.

It appears that Zelbert believed Armenia would serve as an easy backdoor to Europe and its drug markets.

Zelbert left for Brazil in August 2015 and purchased 13 kilos of high-grade cocaine for $18,000. The drugs, concealed in his luggage, made it through customs in Sao Paulo and Dubai.

Had he not been arrested in Yerevan, Zelbert planned to transport the cocaine to Holland, Denmark and Norway for sale.

Karineh Khachatryan, Zelbert’s lawyer in Armenia, told Hetq that she doesn’t know where her client will be serving his sentence.

P.S. Malika Aboussena, a 26 year-old Brazilian national who was engaged to  Zelbert, has been following the case closely. When Hetq informed Aboussena about the 15-year verdict, she wrote the following, unedited by Hetq, for publication addressed to Zelbert. 

" If I could talk to you face to face again. It's so sad for me to immagine you'll spend all this years in jail. Look at you, you speak more than 3 languages, European resident, handsome young man with so many opportunities to have a good life... Why to screw up your life? I know you are an Atheíst, but trust me, God exists and he want to repent and become a new man, because what you have been doing isn't only a crime but also a sin against God. There will be always a new day, a new chance given by Him to have a new life and restart. I stand with you, will never give up on you and as soon as possibe I'll fly to Armenia to visit you."

Top photo (from right): Rafal Zelbert