BRUSSELS — Latin American drug lords have sent bumper shipments of cocaine to Europe in recent weeks, including one in a cargo of squid, even though the coronavirus epidemic has stifled legitimate transatlantic trade, senior anti-narcotics officials say.
“Based on seizures of bigger-than-usual shipments of cocaine, it would be fair to say that Europe was flooded with cocaine ahead of lockdowns,” Bob Van Den Berghe, senior law enforcement officer at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime , told Reuters. In the first three months of this year, UNODC confiscated 17.5 tonnes of cocaine bound for Europe in South American ports, mostly Brazilian. That represented a nearly 20% rise compared to the same period in 2019, Van Den Berghe said.
That followed several seizures there of more than one tonne in March, said Kristian Vanderwaeren, head of customs for Belgium, which went into lockdown on March 17. Europol estimates the European market is worth at least nine billion euros a year. France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain account for just over 87% of its estimated four million cocaine users.The traffickers are as ingenious as ever, taking advantage of the fact that Europe’s import of fruit, vegetables and other foodstuffs from South America is among the few sectors that have only been marginally affected by the epidemic.
The rise in big cocaine loads in shipping containers followed a similar trend with airplanes, Vanderwaeren said.