"White tsunami" Drug mafia floods Europe with cocaine

Spain and France are increasingly becoming gateways for the cocaine mafia in Europe. The gangs are becoming ever more aggressive and resourceful, the quantities ever larger.

DPA

18.03.2025, 21:38

dpa

Spanish officials had never seen anything like it: during a search of a police chief's house in the Madrid suburb of Alcalá de Henares, they found more than 20 million euros hidden behind the walls - presumably bribe money from drug deals.

The discovery of 13 tons of cocaine in a shipment of bananas from Ecuador in the port of Algeciras shortly before was similarly extraordinary. Never before had so much cocaine been confiscated at once in Spain. The work of the drug squad is becoming increasingly difficult and Hollywood-like in the most popular vacation destination.

"The whole of Europe is currently being flooded with cocaine, and Spain plays an important role as a gateway to the continent," warned Joan Ramón Villalbí, the government commissioner for the National Drug Plan, in parliament in Madrid recently.

Twice as much cocaine seized as in the previous year

Just a few days after Villalbí's statement, the Spanish police reported two further spectacular raids in March with many arrests, in Madrid and also in the luxury seaside resort of Marbella, the "Spanish Saint Tropez".

The figures speak for themselves: in 2023, the amount of cocaine seized in Spain doubled compared to the previous year to 118 tons. Five years ago, it was only 37 tons. Figures for 2024 are not yet available, but a further significant increase is considered certain.

Although more and more is being confiscated, more and more is certainly getting through at the same time, a narcotics officer told the German Press Agency. At the weekend, Europol reported the seizure of 73 tons of cocaine that were to be smuggled into the EU from Ecuador via criminal networks in Germany and Spain.

Fewer finds in the Netherlands

Neighbors France and Portugal are experiencing similar trends. There is now talk of a "white tsunami" in the media and among investigators in south-western Europe. The situation in Le Havre in the north of France, for example, one of the most important transshipment points for cocaine in Europe, is worrying. In 2018, 3.6 tons were seized there, in 2019 and 2020 it was over 10 tons each and in 2024 it was already 13 tons.

The increase is also being boosted by the expansion of the ports and the higher throughput in Le Havre and Dunkerque, wrote the newspaper "Le Parisien". A few days ago, customs seized almost ten tons of cocaine worth 660 million euros in the port of Dunkerque.

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, it is assumed that drug gangs are increasingly moving to Spain and France because security measures in the north are becoming ever stricter. "A lot is changing in the international trade flows of cocaine," said Jan Janse from the Rotterdam port police.

Billions in turnover for the mafia

In Europe's largest port, significantly fewer drugs were confiscated in 2024 - around 26,000 kilograms, mainly cocaine, compared to almost 45,000 kilograms in the previous year. It was the third decrease in a row. According to Janse, fewer drugs were also confiscated in Antwerp and Hamburg recently.

Business with the "snow" from South America is certainly booming in south-western Europe. In France, sales are estimated at three to six billion euros per year, while in Spain the figure is now said to be more than eight billion. The reasons? There are several. Villalbí reported with obvious concern that production in Latin America had risen to "record levels".

The drug mafia is also becoming increasingly inventive in its attempts to outwit the authorities in Europe. Cocaine is now not only hidden in containers between bananas and car parts or in sacks of rice. In the Mediterranean, state-of-the-art speedboats are used in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Cocaine on the beach

And for a few years now, tons of cocaine have been transported across the Atlantic to Europe in homemade submarines. There is also another relatively new trend: cocaine is increasingly being produced from coca paste in laboratories in Europe.

And as controls become stricter in larger ports, the authorities have found that traffickers in Spain and France are switching to smaller, less secure ports. Criminals are also increasingly using the so-called "drop-off method": they drop drug packages from cargo ships so that smaller boats can collect them later.

However, this sometimes goes wrong - almost two years ago, two tons of cocaine washed up on the beaches of the English Channel near Cherbourg. The increase in supply is pushing the price down enormously: at 16,000 euros, a kilo of cocaine only costs half as much as it did two years ago, an investigator told the Spanish newspaper "El Mundo".

The cocaine mafia is becoming increasingly inventive - and aggressive

The former upper class drug has long since arrived in the middle of society throughout Europe. The flood of cocaine is not without consequences. This can also be felt in Germany. Between 2015 and 2021, the proportion of 18 to 59-year-olds who use cocaine each year rose from 0.6 to 1.6 percent, according to the 2024 annual report by the Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

However, drug trafficking is not just a major health problem. In Spain, there has already been an alarming increase in violence caused by the "narcos" - the drug criminals. There are kidnappings in Gran Canaria, more and more shootings in Catalonia and Andalusia, more and more drug-related crimes in Mallorca.

Last year, for example, a dock worker was murdered by the mafia in Barcelona, and two investigators died in the port of the southern town of Barbate when a drug dealer deliberately ran them over with his speedboat. Barbate is "one of the saddest and worst events we have ever experienced.

Police successes are "priced in"

It shows the loss of respect for authority, a problem that is particularly evident in Andalusia, but could also spread to other parts of the country," warned anti-drug prosecutor Rosa Ana Morán in an interview with the German Press Agency. Drug gangs are increasingly using weapons.

"Dangerous, violent foreign gangs, especially Albanians" are increasingly involved in drug smuggling. The new players behind the "white tide", including groups from the Balkans and Sweden, as well as the Dutch-Moroccan "mocro-mafia", which is becoming increasingly active in Spain, are acting more aggressively than previous players, investing large sums of money and accepting high losses.

"When a container of drugs is confiscated, it's priced in," said a narcotics officer to the German Press Agency. And: "Drug trafficking moves enormous amounts of money and has an enormous ability to corrupt officials and also private companies," explained Morán. In addition to the police chief in Madrid, another high-ranking official was arrested last year.

Alarm bells are ringing among politicians

The cocaine boom has already put politicians on alert. The Netherlands, where the mafia murdered the prominent crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, serves as a warning. Even Crown Princess Amalia was threatened there.

She temporarily left the country and studied in Madrid. With a new law called "Freeing France from the drug trap", Paris wants to prevent organized crime from infiltrating and damaging state structures.

Spain's Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska also recently announced an intensification of the fight. However, despite major investments and advanced technologies, it is extremely difficult to completely prevent the smuggling of cocaine in particular, he admitted. Optimism sounds different.