Italian mob boss Raffaele Imperiale spent years living it up in Dubai and doing business with members of the so-called Super Cartel including Dutch drug baron Ridouan Taghi and Daniel Kinahan.

But police hacks into encrypted phone networks made a bullet proof case against him for the Italians and now he has decided to co-operate to reduce his term in prison there.

But what will Imperiale say and how many of Europe’s top crime bosses can he implicate?

Dr Anna Sergi, an Organised Crime Professor at the University of Essex, has read the prosecution files against Imperiale and she says that while they concentrate on huge movements of cocaine into Italy and the Netherlands they also mention an Irish business partnership focussed on Rotterdam port.

Nicola Tallant speaks to Dr Sergi about Imperiale and the threat he now poses to a litany of top tier drug gangs across the world.

Crime World, with Nicola Tallant, is a weekly Iri…