23 tons of cocaine seized, the largest cache in the history of Europe

The customs services of the port of Hamburg reported this Wednesday that at the beginning of the month they seized the largest cache of cocaine in the history of Europe: 16 tons of drugs.

Around the same time, Antwerp police discovered seven more tons.

Dutch prosecutors announced that the investigation indicates that both shipments of cocaine were destined for Rotterdam and that a suspect was arrested in that city on Wednesday.

The shipments intercepted by the customs services of the ports of Hamburg and Antwerp came from Paraguay and Panama, respectively.

In the first case, it is about 16 tons of drugs that arrived at the German dock in early February hidden in five containers.

According to customs officials, this is the largest amount of cocaine seized in Europe.

Another 7.2 tons were located on similar dates in the Belgian port, and the same sources indicate that the joint value "is several billion euros".

Dutch police were alerted to the seizures and on Wednesday confirmed the arrest in Rotterdam of a 28-year-old suspect.

The ports of Hamburg, Antwerp and Rotterdam are usually the sea route of entry for drugs from South America into Europe.

On this occasion, German customs employees suspected a load of cans of filler to cover holes in the walls placed in a ship arrived from Paraguay.

They had received a notice from the Dutch police, and when they saw that the ship's documentation was incomplete and part of the cargo did not meet the legal transport requirements, they decided to investigate further.

"There were authentic cans and others with products other than those indicated," according to the researchers, who ordered the entire container unloaded.

When they checked all the containers, they saw that 1,700 of them had cocaine, and they calculate that the 16 tons of drugs found would be worth between 1,500 and 3,500 million euros on the street.

Paraguay is considered a transit country for cocaine trafficking;

From there, gangs from neighboring Brazil operate.

In the port of Antwerp, the drugs were hidden in a container loaded with pieces of wood left from Panama.

The Dutch customs service suspects that the detainee, head of an import company based in Rotterdam, had ordered the shipment of the 23 tons of cocaine seized in Hamburg and Antwerp.

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This same February, the customs of the port of Rotterdam intercepted 1.3 tons of cocaine hidden among coffee beans from Brazil.

According to the prosecution, its value exceeds 99 million euros and the company that should receive the coffee was not involved in drug trafficking.

Last December, the Rotterdam customs calculated that the cocaine intercepted at the port, the largest in Europe, "has gone from 4,000 to almost 40,000 kilos in the last three years."

However, much of the drug manages to enter undetected, and hence a team made up of police experts, prosecutors and government services that prosecute crime and financial crimes has been formed to investigate together.

And this Wednesday, the police confirmed the discovery, in the same port of Rotterdam, of another and a half tons of heroin - the largest cache of this drug in the country's history - camouflaged in a load of Himalayan salt from Pakistan.