Nearly 110 tonnes of cocaine were seized by the Belgian authorities in 2022 in the Belgian port of Antwerp, the first route of entry into Europe for this drug sent from Latin America, a new record.
• Read also: Belgium: 115 kg of cocaine seized in an operation against a Serbian network
• Read also: 36 tonnes of cocaine seized in Antwerp in the first six months of 2022
The figure was announced Tuesday by Belgian customs, during a joint press conference between Belgium and the Netherlands to mark the “intensive cooperation” of the two countries in the fight against this international traffic.
The two neighboring countries are with Spain in the top three of the access routes to the European continent of cocaine, shipped mainly from Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
But the gap is widening between the port of Antwerp and that of Rotterdam (Netherlands), where interceptions of white powder fell last year, to 46.8 tonnes against 72.8 in 2021.
The Dutch public prosecutor’s office clarified that the figure of 52.5 tonnes initially announced for Rotterdam also included seizures in the port city of Vlissingen, in Zeeland.
Conversely, Belgium continues to fly from record to record. The 100 tonne mark was exceeded for the first time in Antwerp.
Seizures there amounted to 109.9 tonnes in 2022, compared to 89.5 tonnes in 2021, customs said. The 2021 figure already marked a 36% year-on-year jump thanks to the amount of information collected from traffickers with the infiltration of the Sky ECC encrypted phone network.
Seizures “accelerated in the fall,” said a spokeswoman for Belgian customs.
She recalled that the holiday season usually marked a peak in cocaine use. 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.
Mr. Vanderwaeren insisted on Tuesday on “the creativity of criminal organizations” to meet the growing demand for cocaine, which the authorities must adapt to.
Belgium plans to recruit 108 additional customs officers and new scanning equipment for 70 million euros in order to strengthen its controls.
“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 common to the two countries.
To announce these figures, Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem and Dutch State Secretary for Customs Aukje de Vries were side by side in a Belgian customs warehouse in Beveren, near Antwerp.
“The two customs services together seized 160 tonnes of cocaine” last year, they said.
Concrete example of bilateral cooperation: teams of Dutch divers intervene in the port of Antwerp to inspect possible caches in the hulls of ships below the waterline.
The Belgian and Dutch governments are all concerned about the increasingly violent crime generated on their territory by drug trafficking.
On Monday, an 11-year-old girl was killed in Antwerp when the house she was staying in came under fire, believed to be part of a settling of scores between rival gangs.
At the end of 2022, the public prosecutor’s office of the Flemish city indicated that it had identified in five years “more than 200 acts of violence related to drugs”.
Targeted shooting or throwing of explosive devices is often considered intimidation. They are also intended to draw the attention of the police to one family or place more than another.
As for threats, they can target the highest level of the state: in September, a plan to kidnap Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne was foiled. This Flemish liberal leader had to be placed under close police surveillance with his family.
He attributed this project to “narco-terrorism” now rampant in Belgium.