In Belgium, cocaine and the Antwerp decor – Liberation
Libé survey
Article reserved for subscribers
In a decade, the huge Flemish port has become the gateway to cocaine in Europe. It is also the epicenter of the “Sky ECC” investigation, a monumental operation to decipher the encrypted messaging system preferred by drug traffickers.
His thick orange docker fleece on his back, Omar (1) recounts what he calls, smiling, a recent “work accident” typically Antwerp. He is in a port warehouse, unloading burlap sacks full of coffee. “And there, bam, a cocaine loaf falls on the shoulder of a colleague! » Then another. And yet another. Omar sees the funny ballet of a car prowling on the quay. Its driver takes photos of the dockworkers as they round up the illicit cargo. “He was waiting to see if we were going to help ourselves. No doubt to know who to claim next…” Eventually, the police burst in and set up screens. The mysterious vehicle speeds off. At the foot of the gigantic red cranes, everyone has a story like that.
In the city of painters and diamond merchants, founded, according to legend, by a giant hand-chopping pirate, cocaine now flows freely, in a sticky atmosphere of general mistrust: cops and customs officers chase traffickers, who infiltrate all strata of society and hunt in their balance and refractory towers, in an endless game of cat and mouse, where it is sometimes difficult to say who is running after whom. “We are under surveillance, and not only police, says Mat (1), one of Antwerp’s 8,000 dockers. Traffickers have moles in hospitals, banks or casinos to seek out those of us who have fa