Welcome to a world of tracksuits, Kalashnikovs and organised crime.

After the fall of communism, the most dangerous Mafia you’ve never heard of ran Poland as its own private playground and wallowed in all the luxury that Eastern Europe had to offer – until someone at the heart of the gang turned traitor and brought everything crashing down in a bloody round of murder and betrayal.

Today Poland is a prosperous modern democracy standing proud at the Slavic edge of the European Union. But in the years after the fall of communism it was a gangster state being bled white by criminals while police and politicians looked the other way. You can’t understand Poland until you know what it was like to live here when the Cold War had ended and everyone in this poor, icy corner of Eastern Europe was looking to get rich or die trying.

CHRISTOPHER OTHEN is an English writer currently based in Eastern Europe, uncomfortably close to the Russian army. His day jobs have included journalist and legal representative for asylum seekers. In off-the-clock adventures he has interviewed retired mercenaries about war crimes, discussed lost causes with political extremists, and got drunk with an ex-mujahid who knew Osama Bin Laden. He has been interviewed by Michael Portillo for Times Radio, and appeared on multiple history and military podcasts and programmes.