Antwerp has historically been known as a center of the diamond trade and has developed a reputation as the epicenter of European cocaine imports. Last year, Belgian customs officers intercepted a record £256,000. That includes cocaine, according to figures shared this week by the Belgian Ministry of Finance.
This is more than three times the amount seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection nationwide. But authorities estimate that only a fraction of the drugs are smuggled out of the 12 million containers that pass through Antwerp each year.
Belgium’s customs chief said in an interview that the large-scale seizures, especially in the fall, seemed to have sparked a fierce backlash, along with a new problem: Authorities are trying to find out what drug gangs have seized before they try to seize it. We steal and take back things that we weren’t necessarily able to destroy.
“You attack the police, you attack the customs. This is something you don’t see in Europe,” said Christian Vanderwaalen, head of the Belgian customs office. “I was really scared that if things continued like this, our people would be killed.”
Antwerp’s port is vast, covering roughly the same area as Pittsburgh. Last year, 20,000 ships entered the port, making it the second busiest port in Europe after Rotterdam in the Netherlands. After Dutch authorities stepped up their crackdown on drugs, smugglers moved more of their operations to Antwerp, said Stein Huerens, a drug trade and policy researcher at Rand Europe.
VanderWeeren said shipments increase as the holiday party season approaches, creating what ports call a “white Christmas.” On November 3, the same day the customs facility was breached, authorities seized 16,500 pounds. Cocaine hidden in banana boxes from Ecuador.
Seized shipments of cocaine were piling up at a customs facility. Dutch authorities immediately incinerated the seized drugs. But the Belgian government did not have the capacity to do so. Drug cartels also tend to use digital detection devices to track packages, making it easier to spot cocaine that hasn’t been removed from the container.
“Criminal organizations were not afraid to come to the facility and recover the cocaine, even if it meant killing customs officers,” VanderWeeren said.
That night in November, some customs officials barricaded themselves in the office and succeeded in calling the police. The assailants fled before they could be arrested and before anyone was injured, presumably leaving behind the drugs they were targeting.
In another recent episode, masked Belgian SWAT special forces rammed a black SUV driving near a port and arrested seven armed men. Police were acting on information that the men were attempting to steal seized cocaine. Like the November 3 attack, this incident occurred on the same day as a major seizure, in which authorities intercepted “several tons” of cocaine contained in soybean meal shipped from Sierra Leone.
And in December, In the south of the country, a customs warehouse storing confiscated cars and weapons was set on fire in what authorities suspect was an act of revenge for customs seizures.
Following the recent attacks, Belgian troops were deployed to guard customs trucks and facilities. VanderWalen said they have also received more resources to destroy drugs, so most seizures can now be incinerated within one to two days. Destroying major caches like those intercepted in the fall can still be a challenge.
Belgian federal police said last week that they had raided 45 premises linked to drug trafficking and arrested 22 people, including three police officers.
It appears that seizures and arrests have not yet disrupted the criminal organization’s business model. Drug-trafficking expert Fuerens said the street price of cocaine has remained fairly stable over the past few years, despite improving quality. Production is increasing in Latin America, he said, and drug cartels are becoming more sophisticated, merging with European criminal organizations and building their own facilities in Europe to process drugs.
Ecuador and its main port, Guayaquil, have the largest supply of cocaine bound for Europe, reflecting how Mexican and Albanian gangs have infiltrated Ecuador, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. It is the source. Ecuador’s president this month declared a “state of war” against drug cartels following a series of assassinations, jailbreaks and bombings in the country.
In exporting countries, gangs bribe dockworkers and allow cocaine to be hidden inside legitimate cargo. Smugglers prefer containers filled with perishable goods such as fruit and fish, putting more pressure on port and customs officials to move containers quickly, Fuerens said. In some cases, drugs are packed into duffel bags and tossed into random containers. In some cases, the methods may be more complex.
Belgian authorities found cocaine packed in hollowed-out logs and pineapples. The drug can also be washed onto fabric, dried and then converted back to powder once it reaches its destination.
Customs officials use giant X-ray machines to examine the contents of containers without opening them. However, scanning only a fraction of the tens of thousands of containers that pass through the port of Antwerp every day is not an option.
“That’s never going to happen,” Fuerens said. “Containers being scanned cause delays, and delays are costly.”
Large amounts of drugs pass through containers that are never searched.
Ports across Europe compete with each other to attract commercial cargo. Antwerp is only 64 miles from Rotterdam. Smaller ports such as Vlissingen in the Netherlands, Le Havre in France and Hamburg in Germany are all keen for more business.
“If Rotterdam and Antwerp intensify their activities, they will look for alternative routes,” Huulens said of drug smugglers.
Belgium took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union this month, giving it the ability to set the high-level agenda of some of the bloc’s governments. Strengthening drug enforcement cooperation among Europe’s ports is one of the key priorities of Belgium’s six-month mandate.
Drug violence has escalated in Belgium and the Netherlands in recent years. In 2021, a prominent Dutch crime reporter was murdered after helping advise a former gangster who was testifying against drug lords. Belgium’s justice minister was forced into hiding in 2022 after receiving threats on his life from organized crime. Last January, an 11-year-old girl was killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout, police said at the time.
However, not everyone agrees that increased enforcement is the best course of action. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema wrote in the Guardian this month that if the current global “war on drugs” approach continues without alternatives such as decriminalization, the Netherlands is “at risk of becoming a drug state.” There is,” he said. Politicians in the Swiss capital Bern are considering legalizing the sale of recreational cocaine.
In any case, VanderWeeren vowed to continue lobbying for more scanners and staff to build a “wall” in Antwerp that would be too difficult for drug traffickers to break through. His officers are already getting tips from U.S. law enforcement officials about which ships to take a closer look at. Latin American port officials are also increasingly scanning containers before they are shipped, and Belgian officials are now able to look at images and decide which ships to search before they arrive.
“We’re going to upgrade until the cancer is out of port,” VanderWeeren said. “That is the only way to send a clear message to criminals that the port of Antwerp is no longer a place to import drugs.”