How cocaine floods Europe by tons
The drug is now coming to Europe in hundreds of pounds, hidden in containers on cargo ships, with the complicity of sailors. From our correspondent in Geneva, Ian Hamel
Published on 14/11/2019 at 13:11 | The Point.fr
Of the millions of containers passing every year in the major European ports, only a few are actually controlled.
Drug traffickers may have taken the slogan of the Geneva-based company Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC). The world leader in container transport assures you that "your cargo is always in good hands". On June 17, 2019, US Customs seized 19.76 tons of cocaine aboard the MSC Gayane , a 314 meter long freighter. Or a loot of 1.3 billion dollars! The commander was able to leave again and MSC is in no way involved in this traffic destined for Europe . The drug was brought at night off Peru . With the complicity of six crew members, including the ship's second, cocaine packets were camouflaged in seven containers of wine, nuts, and electronic waste.
US customs officials had already discovered 537 kilos of cocaine on the MSC Desiree in March 2019, and the Spaniards, 2.2 tons on the MSC Carlotta , the following month. If the traffickers choose Mediterranean Shipping Company, it is because the Swiss giant is the most active on the sea routes between South America and Europe. The Tribune de Genève, who tells in detail this new artery of the coke, reveals that one of the involved sailors recognized to have perceived 50 000 dollars for his participation. In the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Valencia, the driver of a forklift can earn 25,000 to 75,000 euros just by helping, for a few tens of minutes, the landing of cocaine, contained in 50 kilos bags. The risk is minimal. Of the millions of containers passing each year in major European ports, only a few are actually controlled.
A chain of accomplices
It is still unclear what boats were able to drop the bales of cocaine that have been stranded on the French Atlantic coast since mid-October. But shipowners are not likely to be responsible for this traffic. They do not watch at night when some of their sailors, modestly paid, open containers of "legitimate goods", containing fish, fruit or wood, to slide in the middle, up to 50 bags of 50 kilos of cocaine. The operation is then camouflaged thanks to false seals placed on the containers. This is called the rip-off methodwhich can be translated as "tear off" or "rip off". A system that "requires an elaborate chain of accomplices in ports: sailors, dockers, customs, logistic companies: everyone is subject to the temptation to earn tens of thousands of euros to get the right container," says Sylvain Besson, from the inquiry cell of the Swiss press group Tamedia, a partner of the European Investigative Collaborations network.
On the other hand, the "big heads" of the traffic, understand the cartels of drug traffickers, the producers, the wholesalers, and even the semi-wholesalers, are only rarely caught. The market has become so juicy (300 billion turnover per year) that South American traffickers, who ship five containers in Europe, can afford to have one or even two confiscated ... So do not To rejoice in the record drug seizures that are multiplying. The "business" has nothing to do with the use of "mules", poor poor people who landed in European airports with a few hundred grams of cocaine in the stomach. At the risk of leaving their skin there.
600 to 700 tonnes for Europe
On May 6, Switzerland made its biggest catch: 600 kilos intercepted in the car park of the casino of Basel. Pierre Esselva, a criminologist at the University of Lausanne, a specialist in the cocaine market, points out that the big heads of trafficking in Europe are in Holland. "But the people who deliver Switzerland are not big heads, and the Dutch police are not interested in them. The market here was traditionally run by West Africans and Latin Americans, who serve a festive clientele, "he explains in La Tribune de Genève . Of the 2,000 tonnes of "white" produced each year in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, 600 to 700 tonnes are destined for the European market.
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/comment-la-cocaine-inonde-l-europe-par-tonnes-14-11-2019-2347433_24.php
