Cocaine seizures at Antwerp port are the gateway for illegal drugs into Europe. (agent)
Antwerp:
Cocaine seizures at the port of Antwerp, Europe’s main gateway for illegal drugs, hit a new record last year as Belgian and Dutch authorities face growing concern over the power of violent international gangs.
Annual figures for drug seizures in Belgium and the Netherlands were released on Tuesday, a day after an 11-year-old girl was shot dead in a gun attack at a home in Antwerp, which the city’s mayor issued as a “drug”. dubbed the latest outrage. Warning”.
Belgium’s main container terminal is now seen as the biggest route for illicit drugs in Europe, with 109.9 tonnes seized in 2022 and an unknown but probably much larger quantity reaching the market.
Seizures in 2022 were up from 89.5 tonnes last year. In Rotterdam and Vlissingen, near the border with the Netherlands, Dutch police battling the same gangs seized a further 52.5 tonnes. The Netherlands is the third largest drug gateway in Europe after Belgium and Spain.
Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem, who oversees the customs service, and Dutch Secretary of State Auxerre de Vries revealed the figures at an Antwerp news conference.
He praised “intense cooperation” between neighboring authorities and pledged to hire 100 more Belgian customs officers while investing 70 million euros ($75 million) in high-tech equipment.
“For the Netherlands, spending over the next few years will be particularly related to artificial intelligence, chemical detection and tracking containers,” a joint statement said.
European police have made a number of high-profile arrests in recent weeks after uncovering an encrypted text messaging network used by gangs and several massive drug busts.
‘drug war’
But the amount of cocaine found in Antwerp has only increased and explosions and gunfire have broken out in city neighborhoods as rival groups settle the score.
An 11-year-old girl died on Monday after assailants opened fire on a home, in a shooting Antwerp mayor Bart de Wever called a suspected “settlement of scores” between gangs.
“The drug war is on,” De Wever told local TV.
Belgian prosecutors say that over the past five years they have recorded more than 200 incidents of drug-related violence – mainly attacks on homes and hurled explosives.
Gangs have become more brazen in recent years, including the so-called “Mokro Mafia”, drawn from communities of Moroccan origin in the Netherlands.
In September last year, security was beefed up around Belgian Justice Minister Vincent van Quickenborn after four Dutch suspects were arrested for plotting to kidnap him.
Sniffer dogs and police frogmen have been deployed at Antwerp and Rotterdam container terminals, but officials fear they are only stopping about 10 percent of illegal cargo.
In a separate announcement in the Netherlands, Dutch authorities revealed that the value of drugs seized at their ports in 2022 was 3.5 billion euros.
Europe’s biggest port, Rotterdam, is set to see 46.8 tonnes of seizures in 2022 compared with 72.8 a year earlier, but in tiny Vlissingen, across the Scheldt River estuary from Antwerp, 4,157 kg were seized in 2022. Whereas in 2021 it was 2,100 kg. ,
Smugglers in the Netherlands appear to be breaking their shipments into smaller packages, perhaps to spread the risk of interception, but the biggest seizure was a 2.8-tonne batch of frozen fish in a shipment from Ecuador.
European drug cartels work with Latin American suppliers to bring cocaine mainly from Panama, Colombia, Paraguay, Brazil and Ecuador. From the ports, it is trucked across Europe by well-organised multinational gangs.
It is one of the biggest money earners of organized crime.
The European drugs monitoring agency estimated in 2020 that the EU retail cocaine market was worth between 7.7 billion and 10.5 billion euros.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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