2020-12-09

ANTWERP - The port of Antwerp is considered to be the most important port for coca imports in Europe. Every year, tons of cocaine come here hidden on board container ships. The value of the smuggled cocaine is estimated to have a street value of tens of billions of kronor. 

Since Sweden joined the EU, the port of Antwerp has also been our external border. What is happening here thus also affects the Swedish drug market and the violence that follows in its footsteps.  Cocaine trafficking is a cross-border societal problem.

Kalla Faktas therefore used a collaboration between several newsrooms in several of the countries concerned.  The review consists of two parts; 

Part 1 is about what cocaine means for the development of violence in Sweden, and Antwerp where the connection between the cocaine trade and violence has become more visible through the large port.  

Part 2 is the international part and there we examine how the smuggling goes and how the control in Antwerp's port deficiencies. For the first time, De Tid managed to obtain information on all drug seizures made in the port of Antwerp. Almost half of what was seized the cocaine arrived at the same terminal in Antwerp (MPET).  We followed the routes that the ships took with cocaine in the cargo before they arrived at the port. For we used this "Marine Traffic" database: it keeps track of the positions of ships and yachts around the world.   In our collaboration, we enlisted the help of the Journalist Network 'Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project' (OCCRP) and the Pascal Decroos Fund, and revisited various types of data, such as ports such as ships, shipping companies concerned and all types of details about these ships.  home port, which flag they sail under, etc.

Photo: © Andrey Sharpilo (via unsplash)

Team members

Erik Palm

Erik Palm is a Swedish investigative journalist.

Supported
€ 6.500 allocated on 8/12/2019.
ID
FPD/2019/1628

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