Large quantities of cocaine come to Europe via Belgium. Now the country’s authorities have dismantled a large drug ring. However, great efforts are still necessary to ensure that criminals do not infiltrate the country’s institutions.
Banana boxes from Latin America are often used as a hiding place to bring drugs into Europe through the port of Antwerp.
Jonas Roosens / Belga / Keystone
The huge port of Antwerp is Belgium’s economic engine. It keeps many of the country’s law-abiding businesses running, but also benefits the Belgian and Dutch underworld. Criminals use the port to smuggle cocaine and cannabis from Latin America and North Africa to Europe. The Belgian authorities are trying hard to get the problem under control – and now, according to their own assessment, they have achieved great success.
Some confessed drug lords
A court in Brussels this week sentenced 119 people to prison terms ranging from 14 months to 17 years. The offenses include drug trafficking, illegal possession of weapons and membership in a criminal organization.
This was a turning point in the fight against drug-related crime, said Belgium’s Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden after the verdict was announced. The trial ran from December 2023 to May 2024 and took place in the former NATO headquarters. The authorities are now using it for court hearings that require special protection.
At the head of the network was Eridan Muñoz Guerrero. The 51-year-old received a prison sentence of 14 years and had to accept a confiscation of 20 million euros. “I was the head of a criminal organization, I was involved in drug trafficking. I played and lost,” Guerrero told the Belgian authorities in the first hearing.
Abdelwahab Guerni, the organization’s alleged number two, was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The Algerian has had a long career in the underworld; according to his own statements, he was arrested for the first time at the age of 19.
The police read the message on the messenger service
The verdict and court hearings are the result of an extensive raid that took place in October 2021. At that time, Belgian police raided several laboratories and rooms across the country where cocaine was extracted, packaged and stored. According to authorities, 114 house searches were carried out that fall and 64 people were arrested. Police seized 67 luxury vehicles, dozens of weapons, cash, jammers and several tons of cocaine.
The public prosecutor’s office said at the time that they had discovered various associations that had been active and intertwined with one another since 2017, some of which were related to each other. The French and Dutch police had previously managed to crack the Sky ECC messenger service, which has now been discontinued and was used by drug traffickers to communicate with each other. For example, they informed each other about incoming cocaine deliveries.
Although Belgium’s Interior Minister Verlinden celebrates the verdict as a success, the fight against drug-related crime will remain a Sisyphean task for the police and the judiciary. Through the exposed messenger communication, the Belgians learned in an impressive way how widespread criminal organizations had become in their country.
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Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden described the verdict as a major success in the fight against drug gangs.
Olivier Hoslet / EPA
At first glance, the fight against the gangs now seems to be producing success. In 2023, 121 tons of cocaine were seized in the port of Antwerp, and 35 tons so far this year. Seizures also fell in the port of Rotterdam, the largest on the continent.
Further efforts are needed
The Belgian and Dutch customs authorities attribute this to stricter controls, which are forcing traders to switch to other ports.
The head of the Belgian national police in Antwerp, on the other hand, believes that the traders had found ways and means to circumvent the controls and smuggle the goods through the port.
Criminal experts are also of the opinion that a strike against a network is not enough to paralyze the drug business – even if it is as spectacular as that of the Belgian police. The profits to be made from drugs are huge and represent a great temptation for criminal organizations. When drug lords are taken out of circulation by the authorities, other dealers usually immediately step in.
In Belgium, but also in the Netherlands, there is a fear that drug traffickers will establish themselves in the business world and also seek to infiltrate the administration and the judiciary. Neither Belgium nor the Netherlands are already “narco-states,” as is sometimes polemically claimed in political debates.
But both countries will have to continue to make great efforts to limit drug traffickers’ networks. The infrastructure with the two major ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam is simply too good for criminals.
