Exploitation by drug traffickers has limitations of authorities not only in Brazil but around the world
08/07/2023
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Dogs were used to detect drugs in cargo from Santos to Antwerp — Foto: Divulgação
The Port of Santos broke another record last year. It handled 162.4 million tonnes of cargo. The transaction value was $174.6 billion. Soybeans, corn, orange juice, meat, and cellulose are among the cargoes that pass in greater volume on the freighters that leave the port every day. In the first months of 2023, the numbers continue to impress. Nearly 30% of Brazil’s total trade passes through Santos. But Brazil’s largest port has also figured in another kind of statistic for years: that of the international cocaine trade.
Between 2016 and 2022, the Federal Revenue seized 126 tonnes of the drug in containers or hidden in parts of ships that were about to set sail. This year, up to June, it was 6 tonnes. The destination is almost always Europe. According to European authorities, Santos appears to be the world’s second-largest supplier of cocaine to the Old Continent.
In recent weeks, Valor has gathered data and reports from the Federal Police, the Federal Revenue, the Prosecution Service, the São Paulo Security Secretariat, and European Union officials that help paint an updated portrait of how crime has exploited the country’s port structures — especially in Santos.
The involvement of local traffickers in trade with Europe has helped change the criminal landscape of the southern coast of São Paulo in recent years, prosecutors say.
Since the end of July, the São Paulo government has maintained a special operation in the region around Santos. The operation began after a police officer was murdered. And although the focus is not on the fight against international drug trafficking in Santos, this is the main background that the police officers involved in the operation have to deal with.
The exploitation by drug traffickers of the port of Santos, as well as others in the country, is a problem without a clear solution, and one that exposes the limitations of police, customs agents, and other authorities around the world. Europe’s major ports have also proven to be very porous to crime.
Despite constant variations, the modus operandi is usually to disguise the illegal in the legal.
In September, traffickers packed 772 kilograms of cocaine into a shipment of 640 bags of coffee from Santos to the Belgian port of Antwerp, Europe’s second largest. A sniffer dog and the use of scanners assisted the Federal Revenue and Federal Police agents in the seizure.
In February, the cover was a container of bags of peanuts to be exported to Poland. The freighter was scheduled to call at Antwerp. Among the peanuts were tablets containing 887 kilos of cocaine. In March, traffickers hid packages containing a total of 670 kilos of cocaine in a 40-foot container loaded with soy protein. Destination: Antwerp. Again, dogs and scanners helped agents.
European authorities say a gram of cocaine now costs between €40 and €70. Only the batches mixed with Brazilian soybeans would have had a turnover between €27 million and €47 million.
“Brazil is a transit country [for drugs], a sending country, which in itself is a very big problem both for Brazil and for us, because drug traffickers are parasites of the [trafficking] infrastructures that exist between South America and Latin America in general and Europe,” said Laurent Laniel, chief scientific analyst at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), a Lisbon-based European Union body that monitors the drug market.
“The port of Santos is one of the big ports in Latin America and has phenomenal trade with Europe, and traffickers take advantage of this fantastic number of containers that go from there to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Valencia, and other European ports.” Approximately 10,000 containers enter and leave Santos every day.
Mr. Laniel is a veteran expert in monitoring drug trafficking. But he said the transit of cocaine nowadays in containers to Europe impresses authorities.
“Cocaine trafficking using containers is not new, but the volume, the scale, this is new. Either we had no idea [of what was going through port authorities] before, or there was an explosion in the use of this maritime means of transporting cocaine less than 10 years ago,” he said.
In addition to Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia are also major cocaine suppliers to Europe. The Europeans calculate that between 2019 and 2021, 58 tonnes have been detected in the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil on ships bound for Europe and on ships already docked in Europe that have recently arrived from Guayaquil. Santos appears in second place: 25 tonnes. Despite the increase in detections, total seizures by the Federal Revenue are down.
Santos is not the only option for Brazilian traffickers. Last year, 2.7 tonnes were seized in the port of Barcarena (state of Pará), 1.7 tonnes in Itajaí (state of Santa Catarina), and 1.1 tonnes in Paranaguá (state of Paraná), according to the tax authorities. However, Santos seems to be the favorite option, judging by the number of seizures.
In 2021, out of a total of 36.3 tonnes blocked by the Federal Revenue and the Federal Police in the country’s ports, 16.8 tonnes were in Santos. In 2022, of the 24 tonnes, 16.4 tonnes were in Santos. And this year, between January and June, out of a total of 8.6 tonnes, 5.8 tonnes were in the port of Santos.
Illegal connections between the city and European ports have contributed to a change in crime in the city and the region around Santos.
Silvio Loubeh, prosecutor of the São Paulo Prosecution Service and member of the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco), said that what has been seen in the region in recent years is the transformation of several small-scale traffickers into traffickers with international operations — criminals who have risen through the loopholes of the port. Many have already abandoned the local trade to focus on European demand, Mr. Loubeh said.
The change in scale, he added, has had an impact on crime, as more money began to circulate in the underground market. More warehouses and spaces in the favelas were rented to store cocaine before shipment, and more people began to work in the criminal apparatus.
The criminal group that operates inside and outside the prisons also relies on the structure of Santos, according to prosecutors. The criminal group, according to investigations, maintains a business relationship with Italian traffickers of the Calabrian mafia ‘Ndrangheta. Santos also serves as logistics for operations between other Brazilian and European groups. In 2019, a court convicted a gang that operated in Santos. Criminals who were part of a Serbian mafia were also part of the group.
The flow of the drug between South American and European ports was the subject of discussion among officials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And it was on the agenda of the summit between the leaders of the two regions held in Brussels in mid-July.
European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson recently traveled to Colombia and Ecuador to discuss the use of ports by drug traffickers. In mid-July, it was the turn of Eric Snoeck, commissioner general of the Belgian judicial police, and Peter Debuyscher, director of international cooperation and vice-president of Interpol for Europe, to receive the director general of the Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, to discuss strategies to increase cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, the Federal Police reported. Only three countries serve as the primary source of all cocaine in the world: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.
The Federal Police has been working on joint operations in ports and training with police in Belgium and other European countries. In March, in a victory for the joint effort, an organization using the ports of Rio Grande (Rio Grande do Sul state) and Itajaí to send cocaine to Europe was dismantled. Investigations revealed that the group trafficked 17 tonnes of the drug.
But even with cooperation, intelligence, and joint operations, criminal groups continue to move tonnes of drugs across the seas, with holes in ports on both sides of the Atlantic.
In June, at the launch of the European Drug Report 2023, Ms. Johansson recalled that. “About 100 million cargo containers enter our ports every year. Only a few can be inspected, between 2% and 10%. So, it is easy for criminals to infiltrate our ports,” she said. Just like there, in Brazil only a sample of cargo is scanned, sniffed, and inspected in detail.
In the same speech, Ms. Johansson was didactic in describing the current state of international smuggling.
“Criminals are setting up front companies to ship drugs along with legitimate cargo. And they target port workers, shipping, transportation, security personnel, law enforcement, and customs officials. Criminals infiltrate sports clubs. They take jobs at the ports just to get close to these people. And they offer a lot of money for information, access, container codes, and crane operators to place a container in an easily accessible location.”
The latest estimate by the EMCDDA points out that by 2020, the retail sale of cocaine in Europe will be worth between €7.7 billion to €12.8 billion. It is estimated that these Europeans will consume astonishing 158 tonnes of cocaine.
“International trafficking is an unavoidable activity, but the state can greatly reduce the flow of drugs through ports,” she said. That would require more funds, more manpower, and, she adds — repeating a refrain familiar to police and prosecutors — tougher court sentences for traffickers.
Renato Sergio de Lima, of the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, talks about improving governance and being more explicit about the inspection and traceability of shipments. “And you also need to have an extra layer of corruption control over transactions, companies, and the entire port chain. If you don’t fight corruption, the way ports are often appropriated by political groups, you can’t solve the problem with the police alone.”
The Federal Revenue said it works with customs in several countries and with important bodies such as UNODC and Interpol, which help in intelligence and repression work. “The objective is not only to seek the seizure itself but also the origin of the crime, in order to reach the source of funds of the gangs,” said the Federal Revenue.
The Port Authority of Santos, a state-run company linked to the Ministry of Infrastructure, responsible for the management and supervision of port facilities and public infrastructure, said in a note that the fight against drug trafficking is a matter for the Federal Police.
Valor asked the Federal Police what it considers to be fundamental for Brazilian ports not to be exploited by drug traffickers as they are today, and whether a new strategy is being developed. The Coordination of Drug Enforcement said it would not answer because it did not consider it wise to address these points publicly.
*Por Marcos de Moura e Souza — São Paulo
Source: Valor International