Guns and grenades betray Antwerp’s struggles with rising cocaine trade

An everyday family dinner in the Belgian city of Antwerp came to a sudden halt earlier this year when gunfire boomed outside. Four family members around the table were shot, including an 11-year-old girl who died from her injuries.

The deadly shooting in the quiet suburb lined with squat brick buildings shed light on the dark side of the port city’s most lucrative trade: cocaine trafficking.

The victim was the niece of two of Belgium’s most notorious fugitives, wanted internationally for drug trafficking and money laundering: Othman and Younes El Ballouti. The younger, Younes, manages his older brother’s cocaine business. In the same week as the shooting, he was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison.

Authorities believe the two men from Antwerp have been hiding out in Dubai, from where they allegedly continue to run their narcotics operations. The US government in July placed the siblings on a sanctions list for drugs smuggling, limiting their ability to open bank accounts abroad.

“If you see the bombs and grenades on the streets of Antwerp, most of them are organised by people hiding in Dubai,” said Belgian justice minister Vincent Van Quickenborne, who is under police protection after criminal gangs last year attempted to kidnap him and his family.

Belgium signed an extradition agreement with the UAE in 2021, but it has failed to deliver key suspects such as the El Ballouti brothers. The minister said diplomatic efforts to facilitate extraditions from those “safe havens” are ongoing.

According to the US authorities, the El Ballouti network extends from suppliers in Latin America to businesses in China. A lawyer representing Younes El Ballouti declined to comment for this story. A lawyer representing his brother could not be reached for comment.

No suspects have been arrested in connection with the girl’s death.

As cocaine shipments to Europe via Antwerp have gone up in recent years, so have the violent incidents: gangs have thrown grenades and Molotov cocktails at rivals’ houses and set cars on fire — often in relation to stolen drug shipments. Last year, Antwerp’s prosecutor’s office registered 81 such incidents, twice as many as in 2021.

Belgian police have seized record amounts of cocaine from Latin America in recent years, hidden in everything from banana crates to the lining of containers. In 2022, the total amount confiscated reached nearly 110 tonnes of the illegal drug and more than 43 tonnes have been seized in the first half of this year.

Law enforcement is no match for the highly sophisticated international drug trafficking networks using the sprawling Antwerp port to cater for a growing European customer base.

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The port is the second-largest in Europe after Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and extends over both banks of the river Scheldt for more than 11,000 hectares — larger than the metropolitan area of Paris. About 240mn tonnes of freight volume pass through its quays every year.

Antwerp has been a trading hub for centuries. At city hall, spokesperson Johan Vermant gestured to a mural depicting early traders at the dockside. “The town grew rich with salt from the 13th century and sugar in the 16th. Now, we’re dealing with another white powder.”

But in recent years, Antwerp has become “the first port of call for goods that are interesting to use for drug trafficking, like exotic fruits” from Latin America, which must pass customs quickly, Vermant said.

The rise in shipments to Europe follows an increase in Colombian production, driven by innovations in coca processing and a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) rebel group, according to authorities and researchers.

Only about 2 per cent of the goods coming through Antwerp are scanned, with containers selected on the basis of intelligence or risk-analysis.

“It’s very inefficient,” said Kristian Vanderwaeren, head of Belgian customs.

All containers coming from Latin America and deemed a high risk will be scanned by 2028 thanks to new equipment, he said. Currently, just about 5 per cent of those are controlled.

The measures are part of a new government plan announced in February, which also includes appointing a drugs commissioner, additional staff for police and customs and background checks on 16,000 port employees.

“Our defence line will be much, much better than it is today,” Vanderwaeren said.

Shipping companies are feeling the impact of anti-drug trafficking measures. “We suffer consequences when it comes to costs,” said Claudio Bozzo, chief operating officer of MSC. To make the containers available for customs inspection means shipping delays, as “we have a backlog related to that”, Bozzo said.

Still, leading providers including MSC, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd signed a declaration in February to co-operate more with Antwerp’s port authorities.

Law enforcement has gained a better understanding of how criminal groups operate by decrypting their communications. A big breakthrough came in 2021, when they cracked Sky ECC, a Canadian-made messaging service considered infallible by criminal groups who used it. Once they identified leading smugglers, including from the El Ballouti network, “all the puzzle pieces came together”, said Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth.

But the thousands of cases opened after Sky ECC was decrypted have hardly had an impact on cocaine smuggling. “I thought . . . now we’ve killed the beast,” said Vanderwaeren. “[But] we were not capable of breaking down the organisation.”

Capturing the kingpins would not necessarily disrupt drug trade in Antwerp, said Op Gen Oorth. “If you take number one out, there’s always number two waiting.”

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In Europe, the retail price of cocaine has remained stable at about €50 per gramme for several years, while its purity has increased, according to the EU’s drugs monitoring agency (EMCDDA). Consumption has risen, with wastewater analysis showing cities in Belgium and the Netherlands among those with the highest concentrations.

Van Quickenborne, who has called for a greater European response to capture smugglers, warned it would be difficult to stamp out the drug trade. “We think that in the end we will not win the war on drugs, because it’s not winnable. But we’ll contain it.”