Four tons of cocaine, bound for Portugal, seized in the Netherlands | Crime
More than four tons of cocaine hidden in soy bags, allegedly destined for Portugal, were discovered in the port of Rotterdam by Dutch customs, making it the biggest seizure of the year, the Public Ministry of the Netherlands announced this Sunday.
The drug, with an estimated value of 313 million euros, was discovered overnight from Saturday to Sunday aboard a container from Paraguay bound for a company in Portugal.
“This is the biggest apre of this year” in the Netherlands, a prosecutor told the ANP news agency.
Last week, almost daily seizures were made at Europe’s largest port, which has become one of the main ports of entry for drugs, mainly cocaine, on the European continent.
In September, police seized a similar amount of cocaine, valued at €301 million, at the same port.
The Netherlands and Belgium become the main centers of cocaine trafficking to Europe, surpassing Spain, according to a report by the European police agency Europol, published in September.
The growing use of containerized product transport, capitalizing on the large resources of the port terminals in Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg “consolidated the Netherlands’ role as a transit zone”, especially for cocaine, the report specifies.
In 2020, cocaine seizures in Antwerp totaled 65.6 tons, according to Europol, and in February 2021, Germany and Belgium made a record seizure of 23 tons of drug hidden in shipping containers.
After cannabis, cocaine is the second most used drug in Western and Central Europe, with the most recent pointing to 4.4 million users by 2020, the report concludes.