Pierre-Marie Sève is director of the Institute for Justice, an association working to reform justice and fight crime.
In September 2022, a Belgian federal policeman approached customs officers at the port of Antwerp and offered them one million euros.
In exchange, he asked for their help to open a container containing hundreds of kilos of cocaine.
Fortunately, the customs officers denounced this policeman to the Belgian justice system and he is currently behind bars.
This episode, which made noise in Belgium, could multiply in the coming years.
Because Europe is currently beset by a tsunami of cocaine, as evidenced by the announcement by the Belgian authorities of a record year in terms of cocaine seizures in the port of Antwerp.
Cocaine is overtaking European states and there is an urgent need to react.
We are coming to a turning point in the face of cocaine trafficking.
Indeed, several data coincide: first, an increase in South American production.
It is a fact, there has never been so much cocaine produced in the world, and its price remains stable, which means that the demand is still strong.
Then, the American market is saturated, in particular by opioids, which are at the origin of the most serious drug crisis in American history.
The five-fold increase in consumption in Europe does not only have consequences for public health.
Ultimately, trafficking destabilizes States, corrupts politicians and the police.
Pierre-Marie Seve
Finally, there are more and more European consumers.
In France, in the year 2000, 0.3% of the population was a regular user of cocaine, according to the French observatory of drugs and addictive tendencies (OFDT).
Today, 1.6% of the French population uses cocaine at least once a month.
For all these reasons, the Mexican and Colombian cartels are currently turning away from the United States to attack a booming market: Europe.
In the first European port, Antwerp, seizures have increased from 16 tonnes in 2015 to 110 in 2022, breaking records year after year.
At Orly, flights from Guyana have become the first air entry point for this drug.
And for all these reasons, many suspect that the
However, the five-fold increase in consumption in Europe does not only have consequences for public health.
Ultimately, trafficking destabilizes States, corrupts politicians and the police.
If we believe what we see in Mexico, trafficking can make a country a real hell.
Cocaine generates colossal sums, far exceeding the budgets that States can allocate to the fight against its trafficking.
These astronomical amounts produced by traffickers serve primarily to corrupt port authorities, police, politicians, etc.
The director of the operational center for the analysis of maritime intelligence for narcotics, Sjoerd Top interviewed by Le Point, was very clear on this point:
“More and more members of the judicial and political authorities are corrupt in Western Europe.
Cocaine generates so much money that it poses a threat to European democracies.”
Cocaine passing through the port of Antwerp alone would generate 50 billion euros, or the equivalent of 10% of Belgian GDP.
Pierre-Marie Seve
And what is happening at the moment in the Netherlands and Belgium proves him completely right.
These two countries concentrate most of the arrivals from South America in their ports: Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, which attracts the attention of traffickers.
In the Netherlands, the king's daughter was recently threatened with kidnapping by one of the country's most important mafias.
The Belgian Minister of Justice, who has announced that he wants to fight trafficking, would have had a contract placed on his head by this same mafia and lives in an ultra-secure bunker.
The Dutch Prime Minister is in a similar situation.
Worse, the mafias are putting pressure on the judicial system: the lawyer for an important witness in a trial has been killed, as has his brother...
France, for the moment, seems protected from the violent consequences of cocaine trafficking, but it's all about volume.
If current levels of consumption continue, this trade will continue to snowball.
The money generated will make it possible to bribe more agents, which will lower the price of cocaine and attract new users.
The public authorities must act quickly by increasing the penalties for drug trafficking, on the American model.
It is also urgent to finance the war against cocaine, in particular via the Anti-Narcotics Office (OFAST).
Cocaine passing through the port of Antwerp alone would generate 50 billion euros, or the equivalent of 10% of Belgian GDP.
SEE ALSO
- Nearly 110 tonnes of cocaine seized in 2022 in the port of Antwerp: "It's unheard of"
