Going Bananas: Why the Port of Antwerp Can't Stop its Cocaine Addiction
Authorities in Antwerp are facing harsh questions. Why can't Belgian agencies seem to get along? Should cocaine be decriminalized? And why are Europeans eating so many goddamn bananas?
A record 116 tons of cocaine were seized at the port of Antwerp in 2023. The port is now firmly anchored as Europe’s primary port of entry for cocaine.
Antwerp’s attempts to fight back have been crippled by chaos in Ecuador, a lack of cooperation between Belgian security agencies, and European governments bitterly divided about how to deal with the drug crisis.
World of Crime looks at how the port got itself into this mess and whether it can ever get out of it.
First things first, how did the port of Antwerp become Cocaine Central?
Tim was not careful with his newfound wealth. A port customs officer should not have been able to afford even one luxury car. And certainly not the Bentleys, Porsches, and BMWs found at his home in Antwerp when police raided it in late 2012.
His rock-star lifestyle seemed ripped out of a movie. With his best friend Anthony, a former cafe owner, they smacked hundreds of thousands of euros at Myo-o, a strip club in the city. Tim liked to sniff cocaine out of rolled-up 200 euro banknotes and fly by private jet to Formula 1 races. He even started dating an exotic dancer named Dora.
But for the criminals he was helping, Tim probably earned every cent. According to court documents, he provided three different drug trafficking organizations, from Turkey, Morocco, and Serbia, with crucial information.
Tim would leak documents about where specific ships would be docked at which times. Worse, he found out which containers traffickers wanted to access, cancelled any planned controls on these containers, and allowed them to leave the port unmolested.
But unbeknownst to him, Tim was also immensely helpful to Belgian and Dutch investigators. The port of Antwerp, Europe’s second-largest, saw over 5.56 million containers pass through in 2012. Finding which container might be hiding cocaine without guidance is an exercise in futility.
But thanks to Tim, authorities zeroed in on a container packed with bananas from Ecuador. On October 8, 2012, they busted it open to find almost 7,000 small, individually wrapped package. Total weight: around 8 tons of prime cocaine.
Investigators then followed Tim’s accomplices to near Rotterdam and arrested several more accomplices. The hapless customs officer was sentenced to 14 years in prison and a fine of 38,500 euros.
The investigation had ramifications for years across Europe.
One of Tim’s clients, a Turkish trafficker named Çetin G. would be arrested in Rotterdam in 2012 but cut his ankle bracelet while out on bail in 2016 and fled to Turkey. The operation, which finally netted Çetin and sixty other people in 2020, was declared to be the most important blow against drug trafficking ever dealt in Turkey.
Just how much cocaine are we talking about here?
The October 2012 seizure was far from the first time cocaine had been hidden inside fruit shipments from Guayaquil to Antwerp.
In 2011, six shipments of cocaine originating from Guayaquil and totaling 3.569 tonnes had been found in Antwerp, some hidden among bananas and pineapples, according to data from the UNODC’s Container Control Programme (CCP).
But the 8-ton shipment was special.
The absurd size of the 2012 seizure would take some time to be fully realized. But the scale of the crisis in Antwerp soon became apparent.
In 2013, Antwerp customs seized just 4.4 tonnes of cocaine total in 2013. The next two years saw a rapid rise to 8,1 tonnes in 2014 and 14.3 tonnes in 2015.
Absurdity ensued, with Antwerp seizing almost 41 tonnes in 2017 and 65 tonnes in 2020.
Then, the triple-digit era. 109 tonnes in 2022. And finally, 116 tonnes in 2023.
Tim’s record for the largest amount of cocaine found in one go would hold for eight years until 2020 when Antwerp police found 11.5 tonnes of cocaine in a container carrying scrap metal from Guyana to the Netherlands.
This made Antwerp by far the busiest cocaine port in the world.
So why are traffickers so keen on the port of Antwerp?
There are many reasons why Antwerp has become the busiest cocaine port in the world. Some, such as the port’s physical size and the amount of cargo passing through, cannot be changed. But investigators can still learn how to spot patterns in how drug traffickers use the layout of the port to their advantage.
It’s big. The port of Antwerp, including all its docks, container parks, warehouses, industrial areas, and logistic parks, covers about 130 square kilometers. That’s larger than the city of Paris. Or Liverpool. Or Manchester. It’s more than twice the size of San Marino.
Policing it all is naturally impossible and traffickers have used this to their advantage. A 2020 investigation by the Belgian newspaper, De Tijd, noted several ways this was done.
Bribing sailors is crucial.
In one example from 2014, a transoceanic cargo container was docked at a quay with no security. A smaller inland vessel drew up alongside and turned off its tracking system and the cocaine was transferred safely. There have been several cases of local captains allowing drug traffickers to use their vessels for this kind of ship-to-ship offloading within the port of Antwerp.
Some security breaches are even more flagrant. In one 2017 case, drug traffickers drove a car right up to a ship docked at an out-of-the-way quay, and passed empty bags to a crew member, which were promptly returned with half a ton of cocaine inside.
It’s in the perfect place for drug traffickers. In the 19th century, the port of Antwerp became an essential artery for global trade. To reach it, ships have to travel around 80 kilometers down the river Scheldt to access its sprawling docks.
By the 21st century, it has become similarly crucial to drug traffickers from around the world. Brussels is next door, Amsterdam isn’t far, Paris, London, Berlin, and Luxembourg are a few hours away, and the rest of Europe is easily reachable by road or rail.
Drug deals in Antwerp are often connected to the Moccro Maffia, a powerful network of Dutch-Moroccan traffickers. However, the rise in cocaine has given room for alternate networks to compete or collaborate. Organizations from Turkey, Italy, Albania, Serbia, and many other countries have all been found there.
It has a ridiculous amount of cargo. In 2023, Antwerp moved 271 million tonnes of cargo. That’s 2.3 million tons of cargo for every 1 ton of cocaine found there. Now, naturally, the containers likely to contain cocaine can be significantly whittled down. In 2023, only 7.6 percent of all cargo unloaded in Antwerp came from South America. But that is still well in excess of 700,000 individual containers, far too many to be scanned.
The ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg scan only 10 percent of containers from South America, according to a 2023 Europol report. While this was significantly higher than the 2 percent of containers scanned overall, it is still far from enough,
To counter this, the port of Antwerp has vowed to scan all high-priority cargo by 2028.
“As part of the 100% scanning project, additional scanners have been purchased, delivery of which will start in 2024,” a spokesperson from Belgian customs told World of Crime.
A further 108 additional customs staff are being recruited and all personnel at the port are being subjected to tougher screenings, including their financial situation and their personal contacts.
Its fruit terminal is a major luring point. Bananas from Ecuador are by far the most common way of smuggling cocaine into Antwerp, according to an investigation by Belgian newspaper De Tijd.
Examples keep piling up. In the spring of 2022, Antwerp police dismantled an Albanian drug trafficking ring in the city led by Ramiz B. His drug business was supported by several others who collaborated with corrupt workers at the port of Antwerp’s New Fruit Wharf to remove hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from banana shipments from Ecuador directly from the fruit docks.
In July 2023, one of the largest loads of cocaine ever found at the port, weighing 6.8 tons, was found in yet another container of bananas from Ecuador at the wharf’s quay 1742.
Yet despite this guiding information, cocaine packed alongside bananas keeps slipping out of New Fruit Wharf and being found in other parts of Europe.
There are several problems. Firstly, Antwerp’s New Fruit Wharf is colossal, the largest port terminal in the world dedicated to fruit and other fresh produce. Upwards of 1.5 million tons of bananas pass through it every year, exceeding the port of Antwerp’s current scanning ability.
Secondly, bananas are the favourite fruit for most Europeans and demand is only rising, meaning banana imports will also increase as this modus operandi is replicated all over Europe.
So will more cooperation lead to a drop in cocaine trafficking at Antwerp?
It’s too early to say. Besides the size of the port of Antwerp, one very clear obstacle remains. It’s unclear whose job it is to deal with the port’s drug trafficking crisis.
Cooperation in Belgium is a mess. In 2018, faced with a mounting deluge of cocaine, authorities launched the Stroomplan (Power Plan). The main component was the Kali task force, named for the multi-armed Hindu goddess of death, which would see local and federal police, customs, and prosecutors work together to crack down and investigate drug trafficking.
By 2020, two years into the Stroomplan, a review found a severe lack of coordination between Antwerp and federal authorities. Information-sharing was severely lacking. Members of the Kali team could not access key databases. Investigations ran into judicial roadblocks.
By 2024, things don’t seem to have improved.
In researching this piece, World of Crime sent interview requests to Belgian customs, Belgian police, the port of Antwerp, and the office of Antwerp’s mayor Bart de Wever.
The responses received left a very unclear picture about whose job it is to stop drug trafficking in the port of Antwerp.
When asked about how measures to stop drug trafficking were being put in place, a port spokesperson said that “the role of the Antwerp-Bruges Port Authority in the prevention of drug trafficking is limited. The only authority we have in this case is to ensure that terminal operators set up an adequate security and registration policy.”
We were directed to contact federal customs for any information about drug seizures.
We asked the same question to Belgian customs, only to be curtly told that this was a matter for the port of Antwerp and the mayor’s office.
Antwerp’s mayor, Bart de Wever, has been outspoken in the past about his frustration at a lack of inter-agency cooperation in Belgium. In a 2020 interview with De Tijd, he defended his crime-fighting record, pointing to thousands of arrests and improvements on public safety.
But he added: “But I have nothing to say about the infiltration of the cocaine mafia into the port. My police are not authorized to do that. For that, you have to contact the federal police services.”
So can this cooperation be improved?
It very much depends.
Cooperation within Belgium. In January 2024, Antwerp mayor Bart de Wever went on a whistle-stop tour of Latin America with his counterparts from Hamburg and Rotterdam, as well as colleagues from different Belgian agencies. In an interview with Gazet van Antwerpen before he left, he seemed upbeat about the level of cooperation.
“I am very happy that we have once again been able to bring together people from the city, the port, the public prosecutor's office, the police services and customs. Not only to make contact with their colleagues in South America but also to improve mutual contacts. If you participate in such a mission together, it creates a bond. The people who joined us two years ago [Ed: when the Stroomplan was launched] are today working together as a real team on the drug problem,” he said.
Such cooperation is positive but the Stroomplan still needs to show a clear internal strategy.
“I don’t think it is inconceivable that Antwerp’s current pivotal role in Europe’s cocaine trade will reduce in the future as a result of increased security and law enforcement success,” said Stijn Hoorens, an expert on drug trafficking dynamics and director for the RAND Corporation in the Netherlands, told World of Crime.
“From a regional or city perspective, such as Rotterdam, it is possible to claim some successes. But from an international or European perspective, I do not think any local, regional, or national law enforcement interventions targeted at reducing the supply of cocaine will have a major or lasting effect on the European cocaine market,” he added.
Cooperation with the Netherlands. This appears to be thriving. Dutch authorities and the port of Rotterdam have a lot to teach their Belgian counterparts and appear happy to do so. In 2022, the two countries’ customs agencies praised each other for joint efforts that led to 160 tons of cocaine being intercepted.
Unlike Antwerp, the port of Rotterdam has seen sustained progress. From 2021 to 2022, cocaine seizures at Rotterdam dropped from over 70 tons to just 46.78 tons. And while the amount of cocaine found in Rotterdam went back up to 60 tons in 2023, this was ascribed to a 40 percent year-on-year increase in containers scanned, and the deployment of underwater robots, smart cameras, and drones.
Cooperation with other European countries here. There is significant dissent here, at least at the city level. Bart de Wever has always maintained a fairly aggressive stance in the way he wants to deal with drug traffickers and violent crime. Ratcheting up security spending, increasing the number of police, and increasing penalties for drug traffickers are key priorities.
In opposition, the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema issued a recent manifesto in which she wants the sale and use of cocaine to be decriminalized.
“About 80 percent of our police capacity is spent on drug-related crime. In the Netherlands and Belgium, street prices for coke have been exactly the same for years. So you can only conclude that the incredible amount of effort has had no effect on the market,” she said at a recent conference on the subject.
Halsema’s attitude has its supporters. The mayors of Bern in Switzerland and Bogota in Colombia, cities with drastically different experiences with the impact of drug trafficking, stood with Halsema in Amsterdam to support her.
“We have created the profit-based business model that drug traffickers thrive on. There is little in the current attitude employed by authorities in Antwerp that will change that,” said Tom Decorte, director of the Institute for Social Drug Research at Belgium’s Gent University, in an interview with World of Crime.
We greatly encourage a science-based approach to fighting the drug trafficking crisis seen in Europe. The Portuguese model, which covers decriminalization, treatment, and rehabilitation has proven it works. If European countries adopted it, they would see a very rapid difference,” added Decorte.
Twenty ports from across Europe also launched a major new initiative in January 2024 to improve collaboration to fight drug trafficking. This is a promising step but there are significant constraints, including the amount of cocaine passing through them, their respective enforcement and scanning capacities, and a difference in how much they may be willing to invest in bolstering their security.
Cooperation with Latin American countries. The data explored in this article would suggest a few avenues for this collaboration. But much like in Europe, there are significant policy differences at the city and country levels across Latin America.
The four countries visited by the mayors of Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg reflect this diversity. Ecuador is currently pursuing an aggressively militaristic campaign against organized crime, Costa Rica’s president is keen to move away from the country’s traditional softer approach, Colombia is engaging in controversial peace talks with all manner of criminal groups, and Peru doesn’t seem committed to any one path.
About Guayaquil, the prime origin point of cocaine to Antwerp, Bart de Wever was more than a little concerned. “The port of Guayaquil is thoroughly corrupt. Customs there brings the drugs on board for the cartels. It's an open sewer. The original plan was to visit Guayaquil, but we had to cancel that. I do not want the government in Ecuador to have to commandeer two hundred soldiers so that we can cross the streets there safely,” he told GVA.