The Belgian police have found in the port of Antwerp the largest consignment of drugs of all that came from other countries in the world – cocaine worth about 900 million euros. Reported by Het Laatste Nieuws.
The prohibited substance with a total weight of 11.5 tons was located in five freight containers, which also contained scrap metal. It arrived in the country from Guyana, a country in Latin America, first at the port of Zeebrugge and then at Antwerp. The next destination of the cargo was supposed to be the Netherlands, but the authorities managed to get on the trail of a criminal group transporting the drug.
In the case of this consignment of cocaine, two people were arrested – including a former police officer accused in another drug smuggling case. He is also under investigation in connection with a case of money laundering through the Jewish community: according to preliminary data, members of the diaspora in Europe have laundered up to 9 million euros for Latin American cartels.
As the newspaper notes, in the past few years, the flow of drug trafficking through Antwerp has increased markedly. Between 2016 and 2019 alone, the port confiscated approximately 3.2 billion euros of illicit substances.
