EU Main Drug Entry Points: Netherlands, Belgium supplant Spain as main gateways into Europe for cocaine

Belgium and the Netherlands have become the main hubs for cocaine trafficking to Europe, supplanting Spain as the main route of entry into European countries, Europol said on Tuesday.

The report from the European police agency noted that criminal organisations, from Colombia especially, are using the ports of Rotterdam (Netherlands), Hamburg (Germany) and especially Antwerp (Belgium) to bring the drugs into the Netherlands, from where they are transported throughout Europe.

"The epicentre of the cocaine market in Europe has shifted northwards," the report, drawn up in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said.

Read more at: Netherlands, Belgium supplant Spain as main gateways into Europe for cocaine | Euronews

Belgium - Antwerp: "Cocaine's new gateway into Europe"

Belgian Authorities report that last year they seized $ 2.5 billion of Cocaine

Read more at:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cocaines-new-gateway-to-europe-busy-belgian-port-1519908386

Colombia: Potential Colombian cocaine production jumps 31 percent

Illegal coca plantations in Colombia reached record levels last year following a 17 percent increase from 2016 to around 423,000 acres (171,000 hectares), the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The UN Office on Crime and Drugs (UNODC) said that translated to a potential 31 percent increase in cocaine production from last year to almost 1,400 tons.

Coca leaf is the primary ingredient in the production of cocaine and current plantations generate 33 percent more leaves than they did in 2012.

"I want to express my deep concern about the amount of money that is moving around illicit drugs," said Bo Mathiasen, the UNODC representative to Colombia, at a press conference in Bogota.

Colombia remains way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of illegal coca plantations, while it is also the top producer of cocaine, much of it destined for the United States, the biggest consumer of the white powder.

Read more: Potential Colombian cocaine production jumps 31 percent | AFP.com

Illegal Derugs: The Netherlands Fights Drug Scare With Info and reward for info - Not Panic - by Charlotte Alfred

A spate of deaths attributed to dangerous drugs in Amsterdam has prompted a major effort by Dutch authorities to prevent further tragedy.illegal

But rather than cracking down on the people buying the drugs, the Netherlands is focusing on keeping drug users safe and tracking down the dodgy dealer.

Three British tourists have died in Amsterdam in recent months after snorting heroin they may have believed to be cocaine, according to Dutch police. More than a dozen other tourists have fallen sick, apparently after using the same drug.

Police believe that a single drug dealer is responsible. They suspect the dealer doesn't realize he is selling heroin, which is much more expensive than cocaine, a spokesman for the force told the BBC. White heroin, which is less common than brown heroin, looks like cocaine but can cause respiratory failure when snorted.

Dutch authorities are offering a reward of 15,000 euros ($18,500) for information about the dealer, who they believe may be targeting tourists.

Read more: The Netherlands Fights Drug Scare With Information, Not Panic

Suriname: President Bouterse wants Cocaine conviction retrial in Netherlands and goes on "redemption" campaign at home

Desi and Dino : "shame and scandal in the family"

President of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, wants his sentence to 11 years in prison due to cocaine trade be scrapped, and has asked the Supreme Court for a retrial, the NRC reports.

Bouterse’s lawyer Inez Weski presented the Court with a request for a review on Tuesday against the 2000 conviction by the court in The Hague.

According to the lawyer, the key witness in the court case, Belgian Patrick van L. said that he gave a falsely incriminating statement to the court because he was under pressure from the Public Prosecution Service (OM). The witness said that Bouterse was involved in the transport of 474 kilos of cocaine, which was intercepted in the Stellendam port in 1997.

Weski states that the witness made this statement because the OM promised him several favors that were never made public. Van L. has retracted his earlier statements with the notary public.

In the request for a retrial, Bouterse’s lawyer also asks for “a thorough investigation into the established violations of the probe and the judicial process, not only so that the client (Bouterse) be done right by, but at the same time it be prevented that an investigative team no longer be able to operate beyond every rule of law in this blinding manner.”

Bouterse stood trial for a number of drug transporting claims, but was only convicted for the Stellendam case, and got 11 years. Then-lawyer in that case, Bram Moszkowicz asked for a retrial in 2002. According to him, the statement given by key witness Van L. was untrustworthy.

But problems with drugs are not only isolated to the President, his son Dino Bouterse, who had been appointed by his father as director of Suriname's anti-terrorism unit, was arrested last year in Panama by local authorities and turned over to U.S. agents and is on trial in New York on terrorism and drug charges

His arrest came just when his father, President Desi Bouterse, a former coup leader and himself convicted of drug offenses, hosted the annual UNASUR summit for political leaders of South American countries.

In the meantime President Desi Bouterse in a "look how clean and good I am campaign" has promised the Suriname legislature that his government will go to war against all proven cases of corruption. He instructed vice president Robert Ameerali to order the Government Accounting Agency (CLAD) to start immediate investigation in all government departments and semi-government enterprises to unearth malpractices and corruption.

"This is hypocrisy in overdrive", said a member of the Suriname opposition in the  legislature.

EU-Digest

FARC Worlds Bigest Cocaine producer: Marxists with a Better Business Plan

According to a document captured by Colombian military intelligence, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—the South American nation's biggest guerrilla army—negotiated a deal in 2007 to supply Mexican drug cartels directly on consignment, bypassing the gangs that had previously served as go-betweens.

Under the pact, the FARC undertook to provide a kind of vendor financing for shipments of tons of cocaine, in essence taking on more risk in search of higher margins. The flood of cash that has since flowed to the guerrillas has helped them remain a threat to the government of President Alvaro Uribe and has offset the damage to their finances inflicted by a seven-year army offensive. "I've heard the FARC derives somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion a year from the trade," says Michael Braun, who stepped down in 2008 as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's operations chief. "I happen to believe that number is woefully underestimated."

The FARC, a Marxist group, has been fighting to topple Colombia's government for 45 years, making it the oldest guerrilla force in Latin America. More than a decade ago it began to finance its operations with cocaine sales and has since become the world's biggest producer.

For more-Marxists with a Better Business Plan - BusinessWeek

VOA News - US Senate Panel Warns of Increasing Drug Trafficking between West Africa and Europe

For the complete report from the VOA News click on this link

US Senate Panel Warns of Increasing Drug Trafficking between West Africa and Europe

A subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony from experts on Tuesday, detailing the exploding drug trafficking problem in West Africa. According to the panel, West Africa has become a crucial transit point for cocaine from South America headed to customers in Europe, posing a major threat to political stability and security in West Africa and elsewhere. All of the experts testifying at the panel warned of a dangerous convergence in West Africa of South American drug kingpins looking to sell their cocaine, terrorist groups with bases in Africa and European buyers. The experts said cocaine is shipped from South America - often with Venezuela serving as a launching pad - broken down into smaller parcels when it arrives in Africa and transported by African "mules," or individual traffickers by land and air to thriving markets in Europe.

Note EU-Digest: On several occasions EU-Digest reported on this major problem and signaled that EU Governments and the European Parliament needed to take urgent action. So far there seems to have been no significant action on the part of European Governments or the EU-Parliament except for some ineffective general statements.

Washington Post: Guinea narcostate revealed in TV confessions - cocaine sent to Europe in the country's diplomatic pouch - by Rukmini Callimachi

For the complete report from the washingtonpost.com click on this link

Guinea narcostate revealed in TV confessions - cocaine sent to Europe in the country's diplomatic pouch - by Rukmini Callimachi

As the people of Guinea sat transfixed before their TV sets, top government officials one after another confessed to their role in a lucrative international cocaine trade. Organized by a military junta that seized power three months ago, the confessions offer unprecedented insight into an exploding drug trade in West Africa, one that connects coca leaves grown in South American fields to cocaine users in European.

A recent United Nations report found that at least 46 tons of cocaine have been seized en route to Europe via West Africa since 2005, bringing profits that sometimes exceed the entire defense budgets of countries it passes through. Before that time, less than a ton a year was seized from the entire continent. "The vast majority of cocaine that is destined for Europe is now going through West Africa," said Michael Braun, who was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's operations chief when he retired in October. Note EU-Digest: Although there have been warnings about ongoing large drug shipments from South America via Africa to Europe for many months now, very little seems to be done on the European end of this criminal trade route. It is high time serious attention is given by the European political and judicial establishment to stop this exploding drug trade which has gotten totally out of hand.

MRT.com.mk: European Cocaine and Narcotics Problems Increase: Africa may be new 'drug hub

For the complete report in the MRT.com.mk click on this link

European Cocaine and Narcotics Problems Increase: Africa may be new 'drug hub

Africa is threatening to become the world's newest drug nightmare as Colombian narcotics barons scheme to turn the continent into a hub for shipping cocaine to Europe, the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration said on Tuesday. In an exclusive interview, DEA administrator Karen Tandy said drug interdiction officials are also very worried about Africa's new role as a weigh-station for Europe-bound heroin from southwest Asia, particularly Afghanistan.

"Africa will be, in terms of a drug hot bed, one of our worst nightmares if we don't get ahead of that curve now," Tandy said on the sidelines of a major international anti-drug conference being held in Madrid by the DEA and Spain.

Lured by Europe's voracious appetite for cocaine, the strong value of the euro and lax law enforcement structures in poor countries of Africa, Latin American drug trafficking networks are "setting up shop" in nations such as Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast in the west of the continent and Kenya in the east, Tandy and other DEA officials said in the interview. Comment EU-Digest: The EU Commission should put this problem high on their agenda and the EU member states should increase Airport and Seaport drug controls for people, aircraft and ships coming from the Afican continent.