The drug flows in through European ports, and figures from the monitoring body EMCDDA show that a record 303 tonnes of cocaine entered the EU in 2021. On Wednesday, the European Commission will propose a plan to crack down on smuggling via global shipping routes, writes Financial Times.
ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST: The container ship Majestic Maersk at cranes belonging to APM Terminals in the Spanish port city of Algeciras. Photo: NTB
The largest hub in European cocaine traffic is Belgian Antwerp, where customs authorities state that 110 tonnes were seized in 2022 – also a record. In July this year, Rotterdam’s port authorities discovered 8 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of 600 million euros on a Maersk ship, the largest cocaine seizure in the Netherlands ever.
Scans 2 percent
– Shipping companies have to deal with some of the most dangerous people in the world. The way they infiltrate the entire supply chain, and not just the shipping or port side, is quite extreme, says Keith Svendsen, who heads the Maersk subsidiary APM Terminals.
According to drafts the newspaper has seen, the EU will have more cooperation between European ports, governments and private companies through a “European Ports Alliance”, where customs controls are a priority area. EUR 200 million is proposed to be allocated to finance equipment for scanning containers from 2024.
WARNING: APM Terminals manager Keith Svendsen. Photo: LinkedIn
Antwerp now only scans around 2 percent of the goods that pass through, but plans to scan everything coming from Latin America and in so-called “high-risk” containers by 2028. Only 5 percent of these are checked today.
– Employees are forced
Operations director Claudio Bozzo at MSC told the Financial Times in August that making all containers available for inspection entails costs, but Svendsen at Maersk is more concerned with the employees.
– There have been cases of infiltration where employees are forced to help, he says, and emphasizes to the newspaper that Maersk is not responsible for the drugs in its containers.
– What has gone wrong is that we have international drug trafficking that uses legitimate infrastructure to transport the product by infiltrating supply chains, continues the APM Terminals manager.
2023-10-18 08:49:34
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