Cocaine 'broker' Roberto Pannunzi back in jail in Italy after arrest in Colombia

Pannunzi, described as the world's most powerful drugs broker, captured in Bogotá shopping centre after twice walking free
Roberto Pannunzi
Roberto Pannunzi is escorted by police officers upon his arrival in Rome. Photograph: Angelo Carconi/AP

"Do you want a million dollars?" he once asked of the leader of a Colombian police special forces unit that had burst in on him. "In cash? Right now?"

Roberto Pannunzi – the man named by investigators as the lynchpin of the transatlantic cocaine trade – has never thought small.

He was reputed to have worn a string of diamonds around his neck, just in case the briefcase packed with banknotes that he carried with him to win over his would-be captors proved insufficient.

But on Sunday the eventful career of one of the world's most wanted men was at a standstill as Pannunzi contemplated the walls of an Italian prison cell, and the prospect of spending the next 12 years and five months behind bars. On Friday, for the third time in less than 20 years, Pannunzi was captured, in a Bogotá shopping centre, and arrested by Italian police on his return to Rome after a lightning-swift expulsion.

The drugs trafficker, known as Bebè (baby), is credited with soldering the link between the Calabrian mafia, known as the 'Ndrangheta, and Colombia's Medellin cartels that has turned the 'Ndrangheta into Italy's richest and most feared organised crime syndicate.

His arrest will unquestionably deal a heavy blow to the Calabrian mafiosi. But it may have little impact on the cocaine trade, a growing quantity of which is travelling from South America to Europe through Mexico.

In 2008, a joint United States, Italian, Mexican and Guatemalan operation known as Operation Solare (or Project Reckoning) provided evidence of new links between the 'Ndrangheta and Mexico's Los Zetas.

It is unclear to what extent Pannunzi is crucial to the emerging relationship between the Calabrians and the Mexicans. But in a tweet announcing his arrest, the Colombian defence ministry described him as "this country's most wanted man". Nicola Gratteri, the prosecutor who has been co-ordinating the Italian end of the operation to ensnare Pannunzi, said: "He's the sort who doesn't count his money; he weighs it."

Twice before, Pannunzi had been captured – and twice before he had walked free. The Colombian special forces commander turned down his offer in 1994. But five years later, still untried in Italy, Pannunzi was released because he could no longer legally be held on remand.

Recaptured in Madrid in 2004, he was handed over again to the Italians. This time, he was tried and given a sentence of more than 16 years.

In 2010, he was transferred from jail on health grounds to a private clinic near Rome. And in the March of that year, he vanished.

Though often described as a mobster, Pannunzi is not known to have taken part in crimes of violence, nor is he thought to be a sworn member of any of Italy's mafias.

Evidence pieced together from various investigations suggested his role was to collect guarantees of payment from various 'Ndrangheta clans to pay for a shipment of cocaine from South America. Pannunzi would then broker the deal with the Colombians.

"He is the only person capable of organising the purchase and sale of cocaine shipments of upwards of 3,000 kilos," said Gratteri. "He is for sure the world's most powerful drugs broker."

Born in Rome of a Calabrian mother, Pannunzi emigrated with his family to Canada as a boy. There, he came into contact with mobsters from both the 'Ndrangheta and Sicily's Cosa Nostra.

On his return from Canada, he established himself initially in Rome, where he opened a clothing shop called Il Papavero (the poppy) – a grim joke since, at that time, he was making his living as a go-between in the trade in opiates. Roberto Saviano, the author of the book Gomorrah on Italy's third mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra, wrote in the daily La Repubblica that it was Pannunzi who persuaded Marseille gangsters to set up a refinery in Sicily, putting Cosa Nostra at the centre of the trafficking of heroin into Europe.

But Pannunzi's masterstroke was to anticipate that, because of the spread of Aids and other factors, heroin was a fading market and that the key trade in the future would be in cocaine. He was uniquely placed to broker deals: he had married a woman from the 'Ndrangheta stronghold of Siderno and his son married the daughter of an alleged Colombian "godfather".

"I hope there will be no more concessions, as in the past," said Gratteri. "And I say it because it is exhausting to have to go and search the world for [Pannunzi] every time he escapes."