On January 9, 2020, some 400 kilograms of cocaine arrived in Catania, a small city on the eastern coast of Sicily.
The shipment was the work of an alleged drug trafficker and second-in-command in the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to an Italian anti-drug investigation, the Italian police had been watching a shipment for at least a year. This was the first time European authorities had seen the massive European operations of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Although the US is still the main destination for most of the Mexican drug traffickers, Europe is becoming almost as common a destination for their shipments.
European police have recently reported busts of cocaine being smuggled by Mexican and Brazilian drug gangs through ports in Italy and Belgium.
The Customs and Excise Service of Belgium said at a press conference in January that cocaine seizures at the port of Antwerp were twice what they were five years ago.
The trend has been watched by Bart de Wever. Drug money was going to influence politics and corrupt local authorities given the scale of cocaine trafficking through the port, according to de Wever.
In February of 2021, German officials found almost 18 tons of cocaine in a load of containers. That was the largest amount of cocaine ever seized in Europe.
The price of cocaine in Europe can be more than double the price in the US, according to a mid-level Sinaloa Cartel operator.
A kilo delivered inside the US could be around $30,000 wholesale, but in Europe it could reach $60,000 or more. The risk is the same, so for us it is worth it, the operator said.
Mexican, Brazilian and Colombian criminal organizations are allied with Europe's most prominent mafia. The Ndrangheta has been linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, which has been involved in the distribution of cocaine into Europe.
In October of 2021, authorities in northern Italy seized 19 kilos of cocaine with a value estimated at 3.2 million Euros.
Police found the involvement of several Italian nationals in the man's network.
A recent indictment filed in the US against a Mexican man named Carlos Rubén Ramírez Monroy also describes extensive operations in Romania by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generaci.
A large-scale money-laundering scheme, as well as a network of traffickers of meth and cocaine from Mexico to Europe, is alleged in the indictment.
In 2020 Ramírez Monroy was arrested and extradited to the US. He was described as a member of a large criminal network in Mexico that dealt in drugs.
cocaine is not the only drug sent to Europe, according to the Sinaloa operative. He said that the cartel has been shipping drugs to Mexico.
They request, we give. This business works that way. He said that they sent some trials and established business with the European Mafia because they learned they were skilled in producing crystal and pastas.
A report by Europol and the European Monitoring Center for Drug Addiction details investigations into Mexican cartels in the UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Belgium, Morocco, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Italy, and Albania.
In the first half of the year, three large-scale methamphetamine production facilities were discovered in the Netherlands and Belgium, where Mexicans were working with local criminal groups.
According to the report, Mexican organizations may be making synthetic drugs in Europe.
The involvement of some Mexican nationals in methamphetamine production facilities dismantled in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2019? may be a sign that those groups have started producing the drug in Europe, potentially for sale on the European market.
The substances commonly used in illegal drug labs in Mexico, such as BMK and tartaric acid, were found inside several laboratories that were dismantled in February, May, and June 2019.
According to German media outlet Tagesschau, nearly 20 Mexican cooks have been arrested in Europe and accused of helping produce synthetic drugs.
Mexicans in the Netherlands are not like some cowboys working on their own. A Dutch police officer told Tagesschau that something like this is always planned.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
