The increase in trade has largely contributed to the boom in cocaine trafficking in recent years, the turnover of which is estimated at between 15 and 20 billion euros each year. Infiltrating through the ports, the white powder sweeps away everything in its path.
On October 18, 2021, following a search operation carried out by elements of the canine brigade at the port of Tangier, a record quantity of 1.35 tonnes of cocaine was discovered and seized from a cruise ship which had departed from a port in Brazil bound for the port of Antwerp. Much further south, in April 2022, another operation led by the Ivorian police in Abidjan and San Pedro led to the seizure of more than 2 tons of cocaine for an estimated market value of 62 million euros. . These increasingly recurrent and spectacular cocaine seizure operations on our continent in recent years confirm the fears and analyzes formulated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): Africa has become the new hub for cocaine trafficking between South America and Europe.
Cocaine trafficking explodes all over the world
As usual, the UNODC publishes its annual report on drug trafficking on a global scale each year to take stock of the state of trafficking in different types of drugs (cannabis, opiates, cocaine, synthetic drugs, etc.). ), in order to help its Member States to apprehend and fight against this traffic as well as the violence and the crimes which it generates. However, the boom in cocaine trafficking and its havoc on health, security and the global economy has reached such a critical level this year that UNODC decided to publish in March 2023, for the first time, a report dedicated exclusively to cocaine trafficking in order to alert on the extent and the unequaled level of threat caused by this traffic.
And one number in particular stands out from this report. 2,000 tonnes is the overall quantity of cocaine seized across the 5 continents over a year! An astronomical figure, when we know that one kilogram of pure cocaine (dosed around 80%) can be used to prepare 2 to 3 kg of drug cut with other chemical substances, which will then be resold in the form of doses containing 1 gram of white powder for consumers. We can therefore estimate that 4 to 6 billion doses could have been resold to consumers with increasingly diverse profiles. Drug addicts who consume coke daily and compulsively, occasional users who take cocaine for recreational use at parties or techno music festivals, but also executives or young workers who use this stimulant drug to boost their performance or manage stress in an increasingly demanding and competitive professional world. Cocaine has become the flagship drug of the 21st century, access to which has been facilitated by the effects of globalization and free trade. Today, in the big cities in Europe, you can order your coke like you have pizza or sushi delivered!
The 2023 State of the Cocaine Trafficking Report is clear and straightforward: cocaine trafficking to Europe and Africa has reached alarming and uncontrollable proportions. “The increase in the global supply of cocaine should put us all on high alert,” said UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly, commenting on the release of this report. UNODC experts warn of the worrying increase in cocaine trafficking, which, unlike the market for other drugs and psychotropic substances, has not been slowed down by the Covid crisis. Between 2020 and 2021, coca cultivation, concentrated between Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, jumped 35%, setting a record high and the biggest year-over-year increase since 2016.
Europe: the largest cocaine market
For decades, the North American market has been the primary destination for Colombian cocaine. But, as the traffic in opioids (heroin, codeine, fentanyl, etc.) begins to take precedence over the cocaine trade in the United States, which has reached its saturation level, the South American drug cartels have turned to the European market. Thus, a wave of white powder overwhelmed the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg, which are currently the main gateways for cocaine in Europe, thus taking over from the Spanish and Italian ports which were the usual destinations for narco- traffickers in the period 1990-2000.
According to Chloé Carpentier, head of the drug research section at UNODC, the recent boom in cocaine trafficking in Europe has been facilitated by the presence of trafficking networks from Western Europe.st at the source of cocaine production in Colombia and Bolivia. She points out that these “European criminal groups have cut out the middlemen, so drugs have become more accessible in Europe, cheaper and of higher quality.” Europe, which has more than 4.5 million cocaine users, has become a battleground for rival criminal gangs to grab shares of this very lucrative market. On the docks of the main European ports, gangs are waging a merciless war where shootings and settling scores are legion. Because the cocaine trade has allowed street gangs to build colossal criminal empires in a few years. And at the center of this traffic in Europe, the Mocro Maffia, made up of the sons of Moroccan immigrants settled in the Netherlands, quickly stood out as the most powerful and feared of criminal gangs because of the extreme violence and intransigence of his members.
Its boss, Ridouan Taghi, had chosen to make a pact with other drug barons, the Irishman Daniel Kinahan, leader of the Irish Connection, the Bosnian Edin Gacanin and the Italian from the Camorra Raffaele Imperiale in order to create the Super Dubai cartel, from where they direct their traffic to flee European police services. But he has since been arrested by Emirati police and then extradited to the Netherlands to stand trial for his actions.
Africa: new crossroads of cocaine trafficking
Between the countries of origin of the cocaine shipments and the European ports, Africa is at the heart of the new cocaine trafficking circuits in recent years. According to Chloé Carpentier, “world cocaine trafficking is experiencing a diversification of routes and also new transit areas across the African continent”. As controls have been tightened off Europe, shipments of cocaine transported on board container ships or in non-commercial vessels now pass through the Gulf of Guinea before arriving on
European coasts. Because, inevitably, a boat coming from Guinea or Côte d’Ivoire will be subject to less strict control than a ship coming directly from Brazil. Even if the seizures are not very large compared to those made in Europe (less than 10 tons per year), the American and European intelligence services suspect that there are many more. And the networks of European traffickers rely on local criminal organizations which sell their services throughout the trafficking chain and which specialize in the repackaging of drug shipments or in maritime or land transport. The goal is to collaborate between criminal networks to cover their tracks and generate immense profits. North Africa is also, according to UNODC experts, a major transit zone for cocaine trafficking. By road or sea, drug shipments pass through this region linked to Europe through very significant commercial flows.
The Mocro Maffia has numerous relays in Morocco through very close links established with the inhabitants of the Rif region, from which most of the Moroccan immigrants settled in the Netherlands originate.
But what worries UNODC experts more is that Africa is no longer just a transit zone. As a knock-on effect, the traffic passing through Africa has created a local consumer market at the same time. Indeed, local criminal organizations responsible for repackaging cocaine from South America before shipping it to Europe are often paid in merchandise. Thus, this drug is resold to the local market which develops gradually and generates a considerable number of new consumers. But the main fear expressed by officials of the Moroccan security services is to see the port of Tangier Med take over from the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam because of its central and strategic position and the risk of expansion of the Mocro Maffia on Moroccan territory.
Port vulnerabilities to cocaine trafficking
To see the scanners of goods and the various control devices in the large ports, one would think that it would be easy for the customs services to detect containers loaded with cocaine. For Laurent Laniel, analyst at the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the task is however much more difficult. He specifies that “every day, a staggering number of containers enter the port of Antwerp. A tiny proportion of them is scanned, for the sake of speed and competition. Drug trafficking networks are aware of the limitations of customs and security services. These control limitations are imposed by commercial and economic constraints. This implies that a large quantity of drugs manages to slip through the cracks. Belgian customs recognize this: 80 to 90% of the drugs arriving from South America escape their control. US security services, meanwhile, say they can only check 7% of containers arriving at their ports. When it is not commercial constraints that facilitate the traffic, the criminal organizations solicit the collaboration of highly paid accomplices among the personnel of the port to turn a blind eye to their illicit operations.