How Antwerp became Europe’s drug hub

world news

by Eric Spitznagel

When you read headlines like “4 shootings in 3 days,” it wouldn’t be unfair to think it’s been another violent week in Chicago or Juarez, Mexico. But the latest news of rampant gunfights comes from Brussels, the European Union’s capital and an attractive tourist hotspot.

The violence stems from the growing power of drug gangs competing for control of the lucrative cocaine market. In mid-February, the city and its municipalities became a battleground, with drive-by shooting killing one drug dealer and gunfire (often machine gun fire) killing several bystanders throughout the week, including during family-friendly Mardi Gras parades. person was injured. . Jean Spinet, the mayor of the Brussels Saint-Gilles district, said in an interview on local radio that the drug mafia was effectively “holding the city hostage.”

But the true drug capital, the Flemish metropolis that serves as a gateway for drugs and gang violence not just to Brussels but to the rest of the European Union, is actually located 30 miles to the north in the charming port city of Antwerp. be.

How serious is Antwerp’s problem? The Belgian Ministry of Finance announced last month that it had seized 116 tons of cocaine at the port of Antwerp in 2023, an increase of 5% on the previous year and double the amount in 2018. .That’s also 76 more Tons of cocaine than will be seized across the United States in 2023.

Bad guys aren’t going to give up all their cocaine without a fight. In mid-October, authorities in Antwerp arrested a van carrying seven heavily armed men attempting to steal a 10-tonne shipment of cocaine seized from customs. And in early November, customs officers barricaded themselves in an office and knife-wielding thugs tried to recover several tonnes of cocaine before calling the police.

If the amount of cocaine wasn’t so large, people might not want to steal it as much. “At the moment we are trying to incinerate the seized drugs as quickly as possible,” Antwerp customs officer Bart Trekens told the newspaper. “However, there are only a limited number of incinerators available, and their capacity is limited.” The caches seized became so large that they were given an unofficial nickname.cocaineburg”

Depending on who you ask, the situation in Antwerp, the epicenter of European cocaine imports, is either under control or in a state of drug-induced madness.

“I think it’s an exaggeration to say that Belgian ports are controlled by criminals,” says Christian Vanderwaalen, head of the Belgian customs office. “Our law enforcement is doing a great job of tracking them down, and we believe this is the right way to do it.”

Andrew Cunningham, head of drug markets and crime at the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, does not share the same optimism. “I think[drug violence in Antwerp]has become more brazen lately,” he told the Post.

The most worrying sign that the situation is becoming unsustainable is the purity of the cocaine, he says. “Very little adulteration occurs in the Belgian cocaine market, suggesting there is no shortage,” Cunningham said. “If they existed, the first thing organized crime networks would do is dilute the cocaine and spread it further. But they don’t.”

In other words, even though a record amount of money has been seized, far more is probably passing through undetected.

Teun Woten, a photographer and author of several books on the drug trade (the most recent being The Devil’s Drug: The Global Emergence of Crystal Meth), has lived in Antwerp for many years, “I never took drug violence seriously,” he says. “But then a grenade went off in my street, 40 meters from my kitchen window, and I said, ‘Wait, what the hell is going on?’

What is “happening” in Antwerp did not happen overnight. The problem has slowly evolved over the past few decades, as drug suppliers in Ecuador and Colombia realized that the port of Antwerp, once a hub for the global diamond trade, was perfect for smuggling cocaine. First, it is one of Europe’s largest ports after nearby Rotterdam, with more than 20,000 ships bringing in 240 million tons of cargo each year. “This is so huge that it’s very difficult for authorities to manage,” Cunningham said.

The Dutch port of Rotterdam may be larger, but it is mostly automated. “That means a lot of the places where ships come into port and containers are unloaded aren’t really open to people,” Cunningham said. “This poses a problem for organized crime groups trying to remove drugs from containers.”

The Port of Antwerp has also seen an increase in deliveries of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and other perishable goods in recent years. “When you open a refrigerated container of fruit, the fruit begins to ripen,” explains Charlotte Colman, professor of criminology at Ghent University. “So you can’t do this with every container.” This only increases the chance that hidden cocaine will slip through.

“Until now, inspections have been infrequent in order not to disrupt the commercial supply chain,” Trekens said, noting that until 2021, customs officials had inspected only one in 42 containers. “It is only now, when the situation appears to be out of control, that the government will take proactive action.”

This action, at least for now, means arrests, and many arrests. In mid-January, Belgian federal police announced that they had carried out 45 raids and 22 arrests (including several dirty cops) in Brussels and Antwerp. On February 14, former Dutch soccer player Quincy Promes was sentenced by a Dutch court to six years in prison for smuggling approximately 3,000 pounds of cocaine into Antwerp, which was intercepted in January 2020. Moscow skipped the trial and is unlikely to appear at the sentencing).

Mitchell Prothero, host of the podcast “Gateway: Cocaine, Murder, & Dirty Money in Europe,” is unimpressed by the show of force. “There is no indication that one arrest will stop drug distribution,” he told the Post. “New cartel operations are always ready to intervene.”

The lack of real progress may be due to old-fashioned political corruption. Antwerp Mayor Bart de Weber, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has hinted in the past that wealthy entrepreneurs with ties to the underworld are “subtly” infiltrating Antwerp’s politics. “No one is immune from this,” he warns.

The conspiracy runs deeper, Colman said, with the gang relying on “bad guys in the port” to help them evade law enforcement, and in some cases even storing seized cocaine at storage locations, which could be heavily guarded. It is said that the period when the .) “These facilitators are very important because they have access to information,” Colman says.

Sometimes law enforcement is also involved. Last summer, a senior police inspector was arrested for allegedly providing a drug cartel with information about police activity in the port of Antwerp to evade arrest.

This sounds like the plot of a pulp crime paperback – dirty cops and port officials helping drug smugglers bring in tons of coke, while politicians turn a blind eye. But Treckens says it’s “not inconceivable, especially given the huge flow of money.” Inside the drug mafia. Corruption exists at all levels within the port of Antwerp. ”

Prothero says similar arguments have been made, although the justification for letting criminals run amok is posed as a public good. “I was told by Belgian police officers that reducing the level of economic and criminal activity in Antwerp to normal levels for a European city would be such a huge hit to GDP that it would cause a recession,” he says.

Voten calls it narcocapitalism. “We live in a very hedonistic age,” he says. “People think they have the right to get high. Drugs make the capitalist system function smoothly. Economic disparity continues to grow, and the lower classes turn to drugs for escape and to make a living. It looks like this.”

That seems to be the case in Antwerp, which is a hub not only for drug smuggling but also for drug consumption. Antwerp residents take by far more cocaine than any other city in Europe, according to a 2023 report by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which examined the wastewater of 54 million people in more than 100 European cities. It turned out that it was.

“Some people say, ‘If we legalize cocaine, there will be no crime,’ but I don’t think that’s true,” Voten says. “Criminal organizations will switch to crack or mix cola with fentanyl to make it even more addictive. You can’t get rid of the drug. You can only suppress it a little.”

People have largely learned to live with violence, Voten said, even if that means accepting some violence.

“People in Antwerp are nervous, but after a while the situation calms down and everyone returns to normal.”