Drug Crime: How Criminals Are Infiltrating the Transport Sector

“A traumatic event”, is how transport director Joost Visbeen of Daily Logistics Group calls an armed robbery of one of his drivers. The driver was just leaving a customer in Hoek van Holland when he had to stop for a broken down car. Or so it seemed, because when he got out, he saw two men pointing a gun at his head.

While the driver was threatened with a gun, other men opened his container and took out packages of drugs. The driver knew nothing. The armed robbery not only hit the driver, but everyone in the company, says Visbeen. “This is not normal. I am certainly concerned. The number of incidents is increasing and it is becoming more and more brutal and violent.”

Haunted

Criminals use extreme methods to get drugs into or out of trucks. In recent months, the research editors of RTL News have investigated how drug criminals influence road transport in the Netherlands. More than 50 drivers indicated that they had been approached by criminals in the past three years. They received a lucrative offer, were threatened, or even chased.

Trucker René Sloof previously unintentionally got drugs in his truck, making him super alert. Recently he received another offer that he immediately did not trust. He tells his story in the video below:

In an important transit country for drugs such as the Netherlands, the transport sector is of great importance to criminals. Tens of thousands of kilos of cocaine that enter the port of Rotterdam every year must be removed from containers and then driven into Europe. That is why drug criminals are always looking for willing truck drivers. Of the surveyed truckers, 18 say they were approached during work: for example, one driver found a note under his windscreen asking ‘if I wanted to earn some extra money’, with a link to a Telegram account.

RTL Nieuws is conducting further research into the influence of drug crime on the transport sector. Do you want to report an incident or abuse? Send an email to research@rtl.nl

Threat

In the middle of the night at a gas station along the A16, a group of young men approached truck driver Harm and a colleague. If he wanted to earn something. “They were about six men. All wearing neck bags, of those expensive brands.” When Harm said that he was not served by this, the atmosphere changed. “They said if we refused, it would go in a way we didn’t like. And they would find out where we lived.”

Truck driver Dylan (name withheld on request) was visited by criminals at home. They put him under great pressure to collect a container from the port. When he refused, a certain car continued to drive down his street. It later turned out that a GPS receiver was even taped under his truck so that criminals could track him. The container that Dylan had to pick up was eventually opened by customs: it contained tens of millions of euros worth of cocaine.

Dream in tatters

“I was not reassured for a long time, it literally woke me up,” says Dylan. “Because I didn’t cooperate, I spent a lot of money on that organization.” He even bought a gun to protect himself. “I had already disposed of that gun, but later the police found bullets in my car. I was also detained for a while before that. The incident turned my life upside down. I drove containers with fruit, but I didn’t want that anymore. I have my sold the car and went to work elsewhere. It was my dream to have my own company. That dream is now shattered.”

Growing problem

Since April 2021, the police has had a separate team to combat drug crime in road transport. The team is called TFOC, which stands for Transport Facilitated Organized Crime. The TFOC receives about 150 reports per year of suspicious situations from truck drivers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, says Inspector Maikel Dop. “With the growth of drug crime, the number of incidents against truck drivers is increasing.”

“Police, follow” in the middle of the night

Criminals even pose as police officers to force drivers to stop. When truck driver Dennis drove towards the port of Rotterdam at three o’clock in the morning, he noticed that a passenger car continued to drive behind him. Near Rozenburg, the car overtook him and lit up a text in red letters: ‘Police, follow’. “It didn’t sit well with me, so I called 112 and asked if the police had a car with that license plate driving around,” says Dennis. “I was immediately advised not to stop. There turned out to be no police car in that area at all.”

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The entrepreneurial organization Transport en Logistiek Nederland (TLN) also says it is concerned about the infiltration of drug criminals in the transport sector. “Three quarters of the containers that leave a container terminal in Rotterdam by road, the cargo is removed from it in the region, stored and further transported with other trucks. This transshipment is where most incidents occur. Companies that are active in this container transport, notice that the problem is getting bigger,” says policy advisor Paul Poppink of TLN.

Poppink recognizes the ways in which truck drivers are approached for criminal trips. “Truck drivers drive away from a container terminal and are chased. At the first red traffic light, the car pulls up next to them and the window goes down. ‘Do you want to earn some extra money?’, they ask. But we also see that other employees of transport companies , like planners, are approached. It goes in all kinds of ways. On the road, but also in private time at the football club, the pub, or via social media. We have even heard that it takes place on dating sites.”

Drug prices

Drivers indicate that they are constantly alert to criminal interference. For example, they indicate that they are afraid that they are transporting drugs unnoticed. According to Inspector Dop of the TFOC, the so-called grouping the transport, carrying several loads in one truck, vulnerable to drug smuggling. “Certainly trips to Scandinavia and the United Kingdom are popular with criminals. Drug prices are a lot higher there, so smuggling to those countries can be very lucrative.”

Drivers who are caught abroad with drugs in their cargo, and who cannot prove their innocence, sometimes face sky-high penalties. In the United Kingdom, lorry drivers have been sentenced to 15 years in prison. It is a reason for some Dutch drivers not to drive to England anymore.

Weed on board

A driver of transporter Peter (name withheld on request) was caught in the United Kingdom in 2020 with 140 kilos of weed on board, hidden among the regular cargo. Suspicion immediately went out to the man behind the wheel. “We had to do everything to prove that our driver knew nothing about this,” says Peter. “We were able to demonstrate this with GPS and freight documents, but it cost us a lot of money, effort and reputational damage.”

In retrospect, there were signs he could have been aware of, says Peter. “It was a new customer, a seller of cut flowers. Perhaps we should have looked at it more critically, but it was corona time, there were few customers and the truck still had space left.”

‘American states’

Truck drivers who speak to RTL Nieuws fear that the current problem will only get worse. The better the ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Vlissingen manage to prevent so-called drug snatchers, the more criminals will focus on the next link in the transport chain: trucks and container transfer points. “We are waiting for American conditions,” says truck driver Dennis. “That trucks are rammed off the road.”

More than a hundred truck drivers tell RTL News that more needs to be done to combat the influence of drug crime on road transport. Among other things, they argue for a central reporting point for incidents, for more secure parking spaces and for more awareness in the sector. Director Joost Visbeen of Daily Logistics Group agrees with the latter: “We train drivers to recognize suspicious situations. A pallet in an empty shed, locations with little activity. You can question that. You can’t take it away, but hopefully we can prevent some misery and traumatic experiences.”

Trucker Annette G. says she was tortured

With her bright pink truck and horn to the tune of the nursery rhyme baby shark trucker Annette G. was a striking appearance in and around the port of Rotterdam. The trucker from Kedichem wanted to grow her transport company in such a way that she had trucks in all colors of the rainbow. She was already well on her way, until she was arrested in June 2022. She was suspected of cooperating in a large cocaine transport of 1200 kilos in the port.

G. is said to have smuggled containers into the harbor in which young men hid with sleeping bags and bags of sandwiches, waiting for a suitable moment to take out a container of drugs. Trojan containers, the Public Prosecution Service calls that method. Each time she received about 10,000 euros. But G. says he did it under duress. When she refused, she was brutally tortured, according to her lawyer.

The Public Prosecution Service found that G. played a crucial role in a major drug operation and demanded six years in prison. On May 31, the court sentenced G. to 30 months in prison and a confiscation of 40,000 euros.