It snows more in Antwerp than in the ski resorts. Nearly 110 tonnes of cocaine were seized by Belgian authorities in 2022 in the port of Antwerp, the first gateway to Europe for this drug shipped from Latin America, a new record, Belgian customs announced on Tuesday.
This is the first time that the 100 ton mark has been exceeded. Seizures amounted to 89.5 tons the previous year. In Rotterdam (Netherlands), interceptions for this same drug fell to 52.5 tonnes against around 70 in 2021, it was specified during a press conference associating the two neighboring countries in Beveren (Belgium). ), near Antwerp.
An “intensive cooperation”
For the first time, Belgium and the Netherlands had chosen on Tuesday to jointly announce their annual report of seizures. “The two customs services together seized 160 tonnes of cocaine” last year, welcomed together the members of the two governments overseeing these administrations, the Belgian Minister of Finance Vincent Van Peteghem and the Dutch Secretary of State Aukje de Vries .
Both insisted on their “intensive cooperation” in the fight against this international traffic. For example, teams of Dutch divers intervene in the port of Antwerp to inspect possible caches in the hulls of ships below the waterline.
Investment of 70 million euros
On the Belgian side, the government will recruit a hundred customs officers and buy new scanning equipment to strengthen controls in Antwerp. An investment in equipment of 70 million euros has been announced.
“For the Netherlands, the investments of the next few years will relate in particular to artificial intelligence, chemical detection, tracing of containers”, it was underlined in a press release joint to the two countries. In Latin America, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador are the three main cocaine shipping countries to Europe.