The white powder from South America is one of the most popular drugs in Germany: cocaine. In the meantime the police are pulling it out of circulation – and destroying it.
Munich – Heavily armed police officers secure the secret location in Upper Bavaria. There is great concern that criminals are trying to get back what the officials want to destroy: around 1.5 tons of cocaine of the highest purity.
The value: around 270 million euros if it had been sold on the street. Operation “Snow Melt” is unique in the history of the Bavarian police. Officials there have never destroyed so much narcotics all at once as on that cold December day.
Before the cocaine goes up in flames in a waste incineration plant, police officers pack it back into the banana boxes in which it was shipped from South America to Germany. The cardboard boxes should be burned at the same time, there are traces on them. About the criminals and the cocaine. There is a pungent smell in the air – some mixture of glue, lime, and chlorine. “Coke has an unmistakable smell,” says one of the police officers.
In recent years, more and more cocaine has been seized across Germany. According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), it was around five tons in 2018, but in 2019 the amount was at least twice as much. Last year, investigators confiscated at least eleven tons, a maximum in Germany. According to the BKA, one reason for the increasing seizures is finds of large quantities in one fell swoop, mostly in ports.
As more and more cocaine is seized, experts assume that more and more of it will be traded on the market. “Production in South America has increased significantly,” says Falk von Usslar, head of the drug investigative group in southern Bavaria. An indication for the investigators that a particularly large amount of the drug is currently in circulation: The prices have not increased noticeably in recent years, although tons of cocaine have been withdrawn from circulation in Germany alone.
Back to Upper Bavaria: The coke cartons are now being transported to a waste incineration plant in a police truck. Secured by numerous police cars that flash their way through the dense traffic on the streets with flashing lights. A heavily armed officer is even sitting next to the truck driver. The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office leaves nothing to chance on this day.
The truck reverses up to a shaft. “I am relieved that we are here now,” says investigators from Usslar. “There was no traffic jam on the way here.” If the transport had gotten stuck in traffic, it would have been a safety risk.
Policemen throw the first boxes of white powder into the shaft. “One or two single-family houses are down there now,” jokes one of the police officers. Every box that fell into the shaft would have been worth several hundred thousand euros to criminals.
Not only in Germany are investigators withdrawing more and more cocaine from circulation. Last year was a record year worldwide. The BKA calculated that at least 838 tons of the drug were seized worldwide, in 2019 it was 784 tons. The statisticians only counted finds of more than 50 kilograms.
German investigators assume that the cocaine is being smuggled into Europe mainly from Brazil. The reason: Coca plants, from which the drug is obtained, are mainly grown in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru – all neighboring countries of Brazil. There are many container ports in Brazil through which the cocaine is then shipped across the Atlantic in large quantities.
At the end of November it became known that investigators in Berlin and Wiesbaden had discovered a smuggler’s ring. Over the years, the gang is said to have transported cocaine on a large scale by ship from Brazil via the port of Hamburg to Berlin. In at least one case, the drug was welded into steel girders. The hiding places were even sheathed with lead so that they could not be detected by standard X-ray procedures.
In the Upper Bavarian waste incineration plant, the roughly 1.5 tons of cocaine immediately go up in smoke. A huge gripper arm descends into the shaft and picks up a mixture of the boxes, pallets and all the other rubbish in the shaft. “Looks like a gripper out of these fraudulent toy machines,” says one policeman. With the difference that there is no cheap cuddly toy, but drugs in the millions.
What is now being destroyed at around 1000 degrees, the police had secured in various actions in recent years. In 2017, employees in ten Bavarian supermarkets discovered coke packages weighing almost 200 kilograms in banana boxes almost at the same time. It was a huge mistake by a drug gang and a godsend for investigators. Because actually the coke should never have ended up in the supermarkets.
Undercover investigations under the name “Paraguay” followed in many parts of Germany for weeks. The perpetrators waited until the boxes with the still green bananas and the hidden cocaine were delivered from Hamburg to maturing halls all over Germany. Then they broke into the halls, partly armed. Everything under the observation of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office: the investigators pursued eight break-ins in their own federal state as well as in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland.
In April 2018, special forces struck after a break-in in a Hamburg ripening hall. The criminals managed to take packets of cocaine with them, but the journey was stopped by the elite police officers. The investigators also caught the backers in the end. In December 2019, the gang’s European governor and accomplice were arrested in Belgium. According to the findings of the police in South America, he had negotiated the transport of coke to Europe – directly at a table with Colombian, Bolivian and Peruvian drug and cartel bosses. dpa
