Almost 110 tons cocainea record amount, were seized by Belgian authorities in 2022 at its port Antwerp which is the first gateway to Europe for this drug transported from Latin America.
As the Belgian customs announced today, Tuesday (10/1). it is the first time that the 100 ton limit is exceeded. The previous year, the seizures had reached 89.5 tons.
In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as reported by the Athens News Agency, the seizures of this drug decreased to 52.5 tons, from about 70 in 2021, it was clarified during a press conference of these two neighboring countries in Beveren, Belgium, near Antwerp.
Belgium and the Netherlands chose today for the first time to jointly publish their annual accounts of confiscations.
“The two customs services together seized 160 tons of cocaine” last year, announced the members of the two governments that head these services, Belgian Finance Minister Vincent van Petegem and Dutch Deputy Minister Auke de Vries.
The two officials insisted on their “intense cooperation” in the fight against this international smuggling. Teams of Dutch divers operate for example in the port of Antwerp to inspect possible caches on the reefs of ships.
From the Belgian side, the government will recruit around a hundred customs officers and buy new scanner equipment to strengthen controls in Antwerp. A €70 million investment in equipment was announced.
“In the Netherlands, investments in the coming years will mainly concern artificial intelligence, chemical detection and container tracking,” it was underlined in a joint statement of the two countries.
In Latin America, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador are the three main countries from which cocaine is transported to Europe.
Source: News Beast
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