Piet Hoffmann—Wojtek International

Piet Hoffmann’s relationship with Wojtek International is a high-risk undercover partnership staged from inside Aspsås Prison. To the organization, he appears to be a criminal ally building a prison drug network; to the Swedish police, that network is a source of information about supply and distribution. The same actions therefore serve opposing purposes: Hoffmann must make Wojtek’s operation credible and effective enough to reach the organization’s core, while remaining alive if his hidden allegiance is discovered.

Identity and operational arrangement

Before entering Aspsås Prison, Hoffmann had studied it from the outside and assembled knowledge about its buildings, windows, staff, prisoners, and the corridors of Block G. Erik Wilson had helped him learn about the people and routines, but the first passage through the prison’s gates made the difference between a mapped target and a lived environment. After registration, a security search, and the issue of prison clothes, Hoffmann was placed in a cell and left to adjust to the institution’s restrictions.

The arrangement depends on Hoffmann inhabiting a credible criminal identity rather than merely observing criminal activity. Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, members of Wojtek already serving long sentences at the prison, had prepared the ground for his arrival. They had discussed his expected entry and his alleged background, and obtained copies of criminal and prison records, along with his latest judgment, through Stefan’s lawyer. That material gave other prisoners a paper trail with which to assess him. It also shows how the cover was made persuasive: existing institutional records could be assembled into evidence for an identity designed to pass as real.

Hoffmann’s prison status is constructed through small, public acts as well as documents. When the other prisoners were due back, he chose a seat in the television corner from which he could see them arrive and be seen in return. He occupied a familiar chair, used marked cards, and began a game without asking permission. The gestures risked provoking a challenge, but their purpose was to present him as someone who would not hide or wait timidly for approval. At supper, when two older prisoners demanded to see his papers, Hoffmann allowed the confrontation to develop rather than having Stefan and Karol Tomasz stop it. His standing depended on demonstrating that he could meet the prison’s informal tests himself.

Building Wojtek’s prison market

The prison operation converted Hoffmann’s apparent membership into commercial power. He first used forty-two grams of amphetamine, described as thirty-percent strength, to remove the three principal dealers from the market. The supply was concealed in four library books. This was not the end goal: the first successful displacement of competitors created room for a new supplier identified with Hoffmann and Wojtek.

For the first sales, he used amphetamine hidden in the buds of fifty yellow tulips. He divided the initial supply into small portions for seventy-five imprisoned drug users, limiting each first purchase to two grams. The small quantities were strategic: each recipient’s purchase created a debt to a new ruler, while the rumor of a dependable new supply spread through the prison. Hoffmann intended to sell more after taking control of two wardens in Block F who had been paid by the Greek to bring in larger quantities. The plan thus linked prisoner demand, debt, prison distribution, and access to supply through compromised staff.

He concealed the drugs and condoms in a refuse bag beneath ordinary rubbish, then used a teaspoon to measure portions and divided the powder into seventy-five piles. After directing customers to order and collect through Stefan, he moved eleven small packets into his pockets and left the remainder hidden for distribution through other hands. Within hours, the new supplier’s reputation was meant to reach prisoners across the different units. Hoffmann was not simply selling drugs from his cell: he was building a distribution structure that could make Wojtek’s presence felt throughout the prison.

Two audiences, one operation

The prison trade was also a reporting mechanism. Hoffmann’s plan was to supply Wojtek with its first customers and establish a new source in one of Sweden’s most secure prisons, while giving the police information about supplies, delivery dates, and distribution channels. The police needed the operation to develop far enough to expose the organization’s workings, but not so far that Wojtek expanded to another prison before Hoffmann’s knowledge could reach its leadership. The stated objective was information capable of leading back to the organization’s central base in Warsaw.

The dual purpose sharpened the danger of every commercial success. Reports had reached Warsaw and a deputy chief executive after the removal of the three main dealers, and they marked the operation’s next stage. But Hoffmann’s growing authority depended on the same supply and influence that made his undercover role vulnerable. His apparent success for Wojtek and his usefulness to the police were not separate tracks: each advance in the market could deepen his access while increasing the consequences of discovery.

The confinement itself imposed another set of conditions on this relationship. After ten days, Hoffmann had spent twenty-three hours of each day in a small cell without visitors, newspapers, television, or radio. He learned the unit’s routines, including how to use its facilities and when lock-in occurred, before he could settle into life there. At night, he used a pillow beneath the covers, a chair at the threshold, and a sock between the door and its frame as improvised warning measures. The operation required him to master the prison’s daily rules while preparing for violence at the moment when guards could not see or hear an attack.

Exposure and wider significance

Wojtek’s protection of Hoffmann was always conditional on the credibility of his role. When he suspected that his cover had been exposed, he understood that escape within the prison was not a realistic option and demanded transfer to voluntary isolation. A riot squad escorted him from Block G to Block C. In isolation, he could move around within the unit but would not encounter prisoners from the other blocks. The move offered separation from immediate danger without restoring the access or control on which his market-building depended.

The danger was not merely that a business rival might challenge him. Hoffmann recognized that one of the people who had served as his protection and route to escape had betrayed him, and the name Paula surfaced as the identity linked to that exposure. His helpers in the prison were also described as potential executioners if he was revealed as Paula. The alliance with Wojtek therefore contained an unavoidable reversal: the organization that supplied his cover and enabled his rise could become the force most likely to kill him once that cover failed.

The later evidence about secret intelligence reports places Hoffmann’s operation within a broader institutional pattern. A year’s records contained 302 reports describing cases in which an informant’s work to uncover one crime gave rise to another; some investigations had failed despite relevant knowledge already being held internally. The accounts describe an official investigation running alongside a secret one, with information about informants withheld from ordinary casework. The book’s closing factual statements likewise describe the police use of criminals as covert human intelligence sources, a cooperation that is denied and concealed, and the use of criminal records and reports to construct credible backgrounds. Hoffmann’s relationship with Wojtek is thus neither an ordinary partnership nor a clean separation between police and criminal worlds. It is an undercover arrangement whose effectiveness depends on criminal activity, manufactured credibility, and institutional secrecy, and whose costs fall on the person required to live inside the role.