The ‘cocaine collectors’ retrieving smuggled drugs in Rotterdam
As the volume of cocaine imported into the Netherlands rises exponentially, the methods used by the collectors are becoming more sophisticated too
BBC News (UK)
Friday, November 26, 2021
Friday, November 26, 2021
As the volume of cocaine trafficked into the Netherlands through the port city of Rotterdam increases, so too does the number of young men employed by criminal gangs to retrieve the drugs from among freight arriving from Latin America. These so-called "cocaine collectors" make around 2,000 euro (£1,680) for every kilo of cocaine they carry out. And this is a business that has exploded. "We first noticed them about two years ago," says Andre Kramer, who owns a container processing company in the port. "There was one or maybe two of them, and it happened once or twice a year. But in the past six months the groups of collectors have got bigger - 10 or 12 people gathered together, and it happens three or four times a week."
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