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Container ports in South East Europe are increasingly vulnerable to the smuggling of illegal goods by criminal organisations.
This is what it says in the report entitled “Exploring maritime routes of illegal economies in the Balkans”, from the “Global Initiative Against International Organized Crime” network.
This report, published on July 26, describes the ways in which the criminal organizations that control the smuggling of illegal goods in the countries of the Western Balkans operate.
The focus of this report is limited to container ports. This is because these ports seem to be the main entry points for major drug shipments such as cocaine from Latin America (mainly Colombia and Ecuador) or heroin from Western Asia (Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey).
During the research on the criminal activity in the countries of the Western Balkans and the activities of the Balkan criminal groups abroad, it became clear that in the last decade there was an increasing number of seizures of cocaine and heroin shipments in ports in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Romania and Slovenia.
Recent research shows that the tentacles of criminal groups from the Western Balkans are now spreading around the world.
According to the EU police authority, EUROPOL, about 30 percent of the narcotics traffic from Latin America to Europe, is now controlled by the criminal groups of the Western Balkans. Illicit money in the countries of the Western Balkans constitutes about 6 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“Taking into account the statistics on cocaine consumption in the region, we believe that everything that passes through this region has Western Europe as its final destination. this [Ballkani Perëndimor] it’s just a transit point”, said the main author of this study, Ruggero Scaturro.
According to the report, between 2018 and 2021, around eight tonnes of cocaine were seized in South-East European ports, with Piraeus (Greece), Durrës (Albania) and Constanta (Romania) accounting for half of this total.
The report states that the confiscations are many, but the reactions of the institutions in improving the security standards in the regional ports remain few, despite the many police operations.
The report traces the main trafficking routes and explains the techniques used by traffickers.
It also highlights the port ecosystem and its vulnerabilities, and describes the criminal structures operating in and around the ports.
“In some ports, there appear to be cells of criminal groups operating as part of wider international networks. Some ports are crime magnets, not only because they attract local criminal groups, but also those from countries that do not have direct access to the sea.”says the author of the report, Ruggero Scaturro.
Durrësi, the key gateway for traffickers from Albania and Kosovo
According to the report, the port of Durrës, which is Albania’s largest port, is the main artery for legal and illegal trade, not only for Albania, but also for its landlocked neighbors, such as Kosovo and Macedonia. the North. The port is connected to the western end of the Durrës-Kukës-Prishtina highway that connects Albania and Kosovo, with further connections to Skopje, North Macedonia.
It is noted that this port handles approximately 90% of Albania’s international maritime trade and 85% of the country’s import-export trade. It is mentioned that in 2018, 26 percent of all Albanian exports were destined for Kosovo, most of which passed through Durrës.
Cocaine in Albania through exotic fruits
From the official data mentioned in the report, in the last three years, about 1.5 tons of cocaine have been trafficked in the port of Durrës. The report estimates that, if it were to reach the market, it would be worth more than 400 million euros. Large quantities of cocaine come to Albania mostly hidden in containers, which mostly transport exotic fruits.
On May 17, 2021, another amount of 400 kilograms of cocaine, imported from the port of Durrës, was seized in Kosovo. Whereas, the largest amount seized so far is that of February 27, 2018, where 613 kilograms of cocaine were found in containers with bananas.
The use of fruits, such as bananas, is particularly convenient for drug traffickers because they provide a reliable and stable logistical chain from the source to the wholesale market, the report notes. It adds that their degrading nature, along with low taxation and high shipping frequency, makes banana boxes ideal shipping containers for cocaine, as cargo generally clears quickly through checkpoints and at a greater rate than goods. that do not break.
The port of Tivar in Montenegro, targeted by criminal groups
The port of Tivar in Montenegro has been a notorious hub for cigarette smuggling since the 1990s and, over the past decade, a key entry point for cocaine trafficking. The Port of Tivar is the only commercial seaport on the Adriatic coast of Montenegro.
Cocaine has regularly arrived at the port of Tivar in relatively large quantities since 2010. Shipments usually originate from Ecuador. From Tivari, drugs are transported by trucks to markets in Central and Western Europe, mainly through Kosovo and Serbia.
According to the report, in April 2019, police seized 60 kilograms of cocaine aboard a Montenegrin navy training ship that was supposed to be traded for heroin in Turkey. Several large shipments of cocaine were seized at the port of Tivar in 2021.
In August 2021, a suspicious container from Ecuador, carrying bananas, arrived in Tivar on board the ‘MSC Charlotte’, via Koper, Slovenia.
Law enforcement authorities tracked the container to Mojanovic, north-west of Podgorica. There it was discovered that it was filled with about 1.4 tons of cocaine.
In January 2022, Montenegrin Customs and Police seized about 500 kilograms of cocaine through another controlled shipment. The shipment arrived hidden in banana boxes in 70 containers from Ecuador. The delivery was organized by a criminal group with members in Montenegro, Slovenia and Ecuador.
Despite these seizures, criminal prosecution remains the weakest link in the fight against illegal narcotics trafficking in Montenegro, the report states. No leaders of criminal groups or their collaborators have yet been arrested or prosecuted. Since 2015, the main players in the cocaine trade in Montenegro have been the rival Kavaçi and Shkalljari clans, which were once united as the Kotor clan, whose boss, Darko Shariq, was known as the ‘cocaine king’.
Techniques of hiding illegal goods
The “Global Initiative Against International Organized Crime” network says that traffickers have developed new and more sophisticated techniques for hiding drugs.
Evidence from the Balkan sea routes shows that drugs are being trafficked using techniques that do not require the use of containers, making the work of law enforcement authorities more dangerous and difficult.
In May 2021, the Greek Coast Guard released a video showing a practice that is quite common in Latin America, but not widely used along the Balkan sea routes: divers discovered more than 46 kilograms of cocaine hidden behind an underwater grill in the hull of part of the ship in the port of Corinth, Greece.
During an operation aboard a container ship in the port of Ploce in November 2021, Croatian police divers found about 61 kilograms of cocaine in a metal box attached to a magnet at the bottom of a ship from Ecuador or Peru.
Despite being a well-known technique to law enforcement agencies in Latin America, the detection of the use of magnets is the first of its kind along the Balkan Sea Route.
Container controllers, the weak point of ports
For security experts, the key to all traffic going through this port lies in the container control unit. With an average of 6,800 containers entering the port of Durrës every month, the Container Control Unit, which includes representatives of the Customs and Border Police, seems to remain a delicate structure.
The network’s report says that all those containers arriving from Latin America are subject to scanning and inspection. In this situation, experts suggest following the practice of other countries, such as the Netherlands or Belgium, where port officials are constantly changed, in order not to be corrupted by criminal groups.
Since 2013, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has started implementing the Container Control Program, which is applied in 21 different ports around the world. The report says that within a year, around 850 million containers circulate around the world for commercial purposes, and only 2 to 4 percent of them manage to be controlled. Those who are checked are selected based on their country of origin, but if they come from Latin America, they are on “red alert” and subject to checking.
Large drug seizures, but no prosecution of the heads of criminal organizations
Major drug seizures are often followed by arrests of the “small fish”, yet there is little prosecution of the ringleaders or efforts to follow the delivery routes to catch the “big fish”.
This report applies the ‘hotspot’ approach that has been used by the Global Initiative against International Organized Crime’s Illicit Economies Observatory in South-East Europe to analyze organized crime in the Western Balkans, as well as the activities of criminal groups from Balkan countries Western in other parts of the world.
According to the authors of this report, Balkan criminal groups have strengthened a lot in recent years. They have extended their activity beyond Europe, landing in Latin American countries, which are the main suppliers of the white powder market.
The report’s authors recommend more cooperation between port managers, police officers, shipping companies and customs agencies along popular traffic routes, such as those between Latin America, Western Europe and the Western Balkans.
“We need to move from just looking at the security of ports to tracking and disrupting international flows,” Scaturro added./ Radio Free Europe
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