FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
After the seizure of 16 tons of high-purity powder in Hamburg, the state prosecutor is accused of being on the payroll of a gang that was supposed to prosecute him...
In the spring sunshine of Hamburg, 200,000-ton cargo ships almost 400 meters long, loaded with shipping containers, are anchored at the pier along the Elbe River. Cranes slowly unload the metal boxes filled with everything from raw materials to food and electronics, and, in some cases, even cocaine.
Between 2018 and 2023, cocaine seizures increased by 750%, highlighting Germany as another major European hub in the expanding global trade. But the influx is not only fueling addiction, it is also fueling corruption in a country perceived as one of the least corrupt in the world.
“We are seeing an infiltration of port infrastructure in Hamburg, bribing police officers in exchange for information and most recently a state prosecutor awaiting trial as a suspect in leaking information to a cocaine trafficking ring,” said Daniel Brombacher, who heads the Europe bureau at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
In 2021, police announced the largest cocaine seizure in European ports: 16 tons of high-purity powder hidden in 1,700 buckets of putty shipped from Paraguay to Hamburg. The lead public prosecutor investigating the case appeared in court last week, accused of being on the payroll of the gang he was supposed to investigate.
The defendant, named Yashar G, is accused of leaking investigative information to the gang and warning suspects of their impending arrest in exchange for 5,000 euros a month. He was arrested in October by police who were monitoring the gang's encrypted communications - when police raided the network shortly after the seizure in Hamburg. But the main suspects had fled to Dubai. Yashar G is also accused of leaking sensitive information to other drug gangs. He denies all charges against him.
Cocaine production in Colombia and its consumption in Western Europe are reaching record levels. So are European organized crime networks that distribute a product worth more than platinum by weight.
A kilogram of cocaine is worth $2,000 in Colombia, but once it reaches Europe, its value increases to an average of $40,000. The profits from this huge increase are not only spent on luxury cars and villas, but are used to smooth the way for the next shipment, as gangsters extend their tentacles into countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Germany.
Hamburg, the European Union's third-largest port, is one of the preferred ports for drug gangs, according to Europol. Insiders known as hafeninnentäter (including port and ship workers, security guards and truck drivers) move the drugs unnoticed. Two Hamburg port workers were jailed this month for helping to transport 480 kg of cocaine from Ecuador and for facilitating a physical attack on a colleague who threatened to commit a crime.
Police have launched a publicity campaign to help port workers protect themselves from drug gangs trying to recruit or extort them, but Hamburg's port security forces feel so threatened that last year they requested automatic weapons. In one incident, Belgian police tipped off Hamburg's port police that an armed French drug gang was planning a raid to recover seized cocaine.
Meanwhile, cocaine profits are pouring onto the streets of Hamburg. “Karl,” a former bouncer in the city’s red-light district, said the money from cocaine has become increasingly visible in the past five years. “Every weekend you see more and more young people in Ferraris, Lamborghinis and SUVs worth 150,000 euros,” he said. “
"This is not money made from prostitution, fraud or cannabis. This is money made from cocaine."
A series of cases in Germany have also highlighted suspected corruption within police ranks: an officer in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg was arrested this month on suspicion of being on the payroll of the Italian mafia 'Ndrangheta, a senior police officer in Hanover suspected of taking bribes from a drug trafficking ring was arrested in January, a drug squad officer was arrested near Frankfurt in November on charges of "aiding and abetting" drug dealers, and a police officer arrested in Bonn in August who was accused of passing classified information to members of the Dutch-Moroccan mafia, major players in the drug trade in Europe.
"The amount of cocaine we have seen in Germany and the EU in the last decade has led to an unprecedented flow of money into organized crime.
"Organized crime groups have never had so much venture capital available, and also never before such a strong incentive to invest in bribes to ensure that business continues to move forward," Brombacher said.
The Port Authority of Hamburg said that issues related to port security were handled by Hamburg police. In a statement, a police spokesman said: “International organized crime groups often recruit employees of the port industry to support the smuggling of cocaine from South America to Germany and Europe via the port of Hamburg. These so-called ‘internal port offenders’ are playing a particularly key role in this type of illegal drug importation.”
Organized crime experts have warned that the true nature of the corruption brought about by drug trafficking networks remains hidden.
"Germany has had a very hard time admitting its problem with organized crime and still largely denies it today. The sudden influx of cocaine has only just begun to make the problem visible," said Zora Hauser, a criminologist at the University of Cambridge, whose book, The Expansion of the Mafia, about the rise of the 'Ndrangheta in Germany, was published this month.
The lifeblood of organized crime is cocaine. But the authorities are being overwhelmed. Despite all the law enforcement work targeting the cocaine trade in Europe, the supply is plentiful and, unlike most products, it costs about the same as it did 10 years ago. When the Dutch spent €524 million to increase port security in response to a wave of executions by gangs linked to the cocaine trade, the gangs simply moved on to ports in France, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia and the Baltic states.
Cocaine seizures in Hamburg fell in 2024, but the drug is still arriving in abundance: on small boats in smaller northern German ports or via "parasite smuggling", where cocaine is attached to the outside of cargo ships' hulls and removed by divers at the intended port of destination.
"Cocaine trafficking and the money laundering associated with it in Germany can only operate on a large scale through the corruption of public officials and other facilitators. But the focus of investigators is only on perpetrators within criminal networks," said Robin Hofmann, an organized crime specialist at Maastricht University.
Instead, Hofmann said, as has been done in the Netherlands, the search for infiltration of cocaine money should be extended further “to the facilitators, lawyers, local politicians and financial advisors who enable and benefit from organised crime.” / Adapted from The Guardian Pamphlet /
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