Corruption and drug trafficking in European ports

Germany: A heavily armed and masked police officers guards about 640 kilogrammes of cocaine, as well as weapons, cash, bananas and banana boxes. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

29 May 2023

Maritime transport remains a method favoured by Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) involved in transporting prohibited goods and, in particular, drugs. A recent upkeep in seizures in European ports highlights the fact that these are particularly targeted by OGCs, who widely rely on the corruption of insider personnel to enable their criminal activities.

By Jeanne Albin, Security analyst intern

Over the last decade, the use of container shipping to transport illicit drugs to Europe has significantly increased. In particular, seizure data indicates that the vast majority of the cocaine sold on the continent since the mid-2010s was smuggled through its major container ports—in particular, Antwerp (the primary point of entry for drugs from Latin America into Europe in 2022), Rotterdam, Hamburg, Valencia, Algeciras or the Hague.

At the very heart of this trafficking process are the significant advantages offered by containerised shipping such as the possibility of transporting large quantities of drugs at one time, of course, but also the vulnerability towards infiltration and the criminal opportunities offered by these ports’ high traffic and complex operational structures.

Evidence highlights the use by OCGs (Organised Crime Groups) of an extensive variety of modi operandi to transfer illicit shipments from sea to land at European ports of arrival. Whilst the most notorious may be the ‘rip-on/rip-off’ approach, other methods have increasingly been observed over recent years. These include the use of ‘replica’ containers or of the approach sometimes referred to as the ‘PIN code fraud’, which consists in using the reference codes of containers transporting illicit loads (i.e., masquerading as legitimate clients) to retrieve them. However, whilst these approaches may differ in their core processes, all often rely on a common element: infiltrating ports of arrival.

In particular, OGCs’ tactics may involve two types of prerequisites: accessing information related to the shipments (for example, the locations of the containers used to transport the drugs or the aforementioned reference codes) and gaining physical access to the containers themselves. As OCGs are rarely able to exercise direct control over port operations in the European context, recent evidence suggests that the evolution of modi operandi witnessed in the past decade as authorities implemented new and improved preventive measures in ports was made possible by an almost systematic use of corruption—with bribes described as reaching upwards of hundred thousands of euros in most extreme cases, demonstrating the importance of inside personnel to OCGs’ current crime commission processes. In fact, in a report published in April 2023, Europol went as far as designating corruption of personnel (including port workers, of course, but also employees of logistics and security companies with access to ports, and even law enforcement and customs agents) as the ‘key enabler for the criminal infiltration’ of Europe’s three largest ports, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg.

These findings highlight the fact that concentrating on the integration of security measures into port infrastructure design and on the improvement of container handling procedures (for example, through measures aiming to increase the number of containers screened) to contain drug trafficking may be of limited efficiency if not paired with continuous rigorous anti-bribery and corruption control efforts.

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