THE HAGUE, November 6. /TASS/. Dutch police have found over 3.3 tons of cocaine with a street value of 250 mln euros in the rural settlement of Noordhoek, Noord-Brabant province, Algemeen Dagblad newspaper. The drug was found in a converted mushroom greenhouse.
According to investigators, such large quantities of drugs are rarely found these days, even in seaports.
"This is a unique case. We rarely encounter such quantities anymore, especially far from ports," says Ron van Brussel, head of the police's department for combating organized crime.
As the publication notes, the western Netherlands, including the cities of Breda, Moerdijk, and Roosendaal, has long been a key transit point for cocaine shipments to Europe. The region's geographic location — between the major ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Vlissingen — makes it convenient for smugglers. Numerous warehouses and laboratories associated with Latin American drug cartels operate in towns in the kingdom's western provinces.
In recent years, large batches of cocaine have regularly been seized in the region, found in containers containing bananas or industrial equipment. As the newspaper notes, criminals often operate under the guise of transport companies and agricultural farms.
The scale of criminal activity is reflected in the level of violence in the region. In 2015 alone, 17 murders were committed in West Brabant, a significant number of which, according to prosecutors, were related to drug trafficking. In 2020, the same province was rocked by the discovery of "torture containers"— makeshift prisons used by criminal groups for torture and blackmail.
Despite government claims of a "reduction in crime," the region currently remains one of the most crime-ridden areas in the country. In this context, experts point to the rise in drug trafficking and corruption in Western Europe as a whole, where, they say, the "shadow economy" is closely intertwined with legitimate businesses.