This is the first time that more than 100 tonnes have been recovered in one year. Belgian authorities announced on Tuesday that cocaine seizures in the Flemish port have broken a new record: nearly 110 tonnes of cocaine were seized in 2022 in the port of Antwerp. More than ever targeted by drug traffickers, the port city is the first gateway to Europe for this drug shipped from Latin America, often hidden in cargoes of fruit.
Last year, seizures amounted to 89.5 tons. 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, for the first time, customs. Belgian and Dutch, with the ministers of the two countries having authority over these administrations.
caches in ship hulls
“The two customs services together seized 160 tons of cocaine” last year, the members of the two governments, Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem and Dutch State Secretary Aukje de Vries, congratulated each other. Both insisted on their “intensive cooperation” in the fight against this international traffic. Teams of Dutch divers intervene for example in the port of Antwerp, to inspect possible caches in the hull of ships, below the waterline.
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, investments in the coming years will focus in particular on artificial intelligence, chemical detection, container tracing”it was underlined in a press release common to the two countries.
“White Christmas”, a peak in cocaine consumption
For the past ten years, seizures have been flying from record to record in Antwerp, the second largest merchant port in Europe. By 2021, the volume had even jumped 36% thanks to the amount of information collected from traffickers with the infiltration of the Sky ECC encrypted phone network. And while the first half of 2022 suggested a slowdown, the curve then soared again.
Seizures “accelerated in the fall”, underlined a spokeswoman for Belgian customs. She recalls that the end of year celebrations generally mark a peak in cocaine consumption. And several weeks beforehand, the cartels increase the deliveries of white powder to prepare this “White Christmas”, a colorful expression that Kristian Vanderwaeren, general administrator of customs, likes.
In mid-October, customs had recorded one of the largest seizures in recent years in Antwerp: more than 6 tonnes in a single seizure in two “tank containers” delivered from Suriname, a small country on the northeast coast of South America. “Tsunami” for the country, a great port “flooded” by drugs: the Belgian authorities do not skimp on superlatives to describe this scourge that they are struggling to combat.
According to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 213 tonnes of cocaine were seized in 2020 in the EU and three of the twenty-seven member countries – Belgium (70 tonnes), Netherlands (49), Spain (37) – alone represented “nearly 75%” of the total volume.