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Spain made history on November 6 and 7, 2024, seizing 13 tons of cocaine hidden inside a banana shipment docked at the port of Algeciras. That is the largest drug bust in Spanish history, and it turns out the supply chain for laundering that kind of money is just as global as the shipment itself.
Bloomberg’s investigation, published July 14, 2026, traced the threads from that Ecuadorian banana cargo to Wall Street financiers, Dubai real estate, and a now-collapsed Irish fintech called Leveris Limited.
The fintech at the center of it all
Leveris Limited was founded in 2014 as an Irish financial technology firm. On paper, it built core banking software for other financial institutions.
It went under in 2021 with debts totaling €38 million. Bloomberg’s reporting connects Leveris’s former executives to individuals linked to the Kinahan cartel, one of Europe’s most powerful organized crime networks and a group that has been a persistent target of law enforcement across Ireland, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.
Leveris’s former CFO, Oliver Herrmann, is under investigation in connection with the case. By May 2025, two members of Leveris’s board had also been reported as subjects of investigation for alleged ties to the Spanish drug bust. Herrmann and the board members have not been charged, and their precise roles, if any, in any criminal activity remain a matter for ongoing investigations.
Dubai real estate and Wall Street names
The Wall Street connection adds another layer. Bloomberg’s investigation points to US-based financiers with ties to this network, though the precise nature of those relationships is still being untangled by authorities.
The Kinahan cartel was designated as a transnational criminal organization by the US Treasury Department in 2022, which made it a sanctions target and gave American authorities extraterritorial reach over anyone doing business with cartel-linked individuals.
What this means for fintech and crypto compliance
There is a crypto thread here, though it is thinner than the headline might suggest. The Bloomberg investigation references a crypto firm in its framing, and the broader ecosystem of the case involves digital finance infrastructure. No specific tokens, protocols, or crypto-native firms have been named as central to the allegations.
For institutional investors, the Leveris case is a case study in due diligence failure. A firm with €38 million in liabilities, board members now under investigation, and alleged cartel connections was, at some point, presumably being evaluated by counterparties and investors who missed the red flags.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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