Cocaine Smugglers Infiltrated the World’s Biggest Shipping Line

In the summer of 2019, Claudio Bozzo, chief operating officer of MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., flew 4,000 miles from Geneva to Washington, DC, for a meeting with US Customs and Border Protection. He’d been sent by MSC’s owner, a secretive 82-year-old billionaire named Gianluigi Aponte, to contain a crisis.

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A few months earlier, more than 100 agents had boarded one of MSC’s ships, the Gayane, as it slid into the Port of Philadelphia for what was supposed to be a quick stop on its way to Rotterdam. Deep below deck, hidden in ...