A strong earthquake hits western Indonesia, and there is no warning of a tsunami

PARIS: “Seventy euros for one, 120 for two,” said the cocaine dealer as the young woman opened her door to the elegant Left Bank in Paris. Smile. “I take orders and I deliver.” Getting cocaine in many of Europe’s big cities is now as easy as ordering a pizza—twenty minutes or so after placing your order by WhatsApp or Signal, the dealer can be at your door. “Consumers prefer to go to the stand and have their medicine delivered by a man who looks like a Deliveroo rider,” said Police Commissioner Virginie Hague, head of the Paris drug squad. “It is much easier than having to go to a grim place in the suburbs.” About 3.5 million Europeans have used cocaine. In 2021, according to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) – four times more than it was 20 years ago.The continent has been hit by a “tsunami” of cocaine, said the head of the Belgian Federal Police, Eric Snoek, with 240 tons seized in a year. 2021, according to Europol, nearly five times more than it was a decade ago.

Lucrative marketEurope has become one of the most lucrative markets for the big drug cartels, who have not hesitated to use the corruption and extreme violence that has served them so well in South America. “Kidnappings, torture, strikes: there is so much money in criminal organizations that have brought cartel tactics to our shores,” said Stéphanie Cherbonnier of the French Anti-Narcotics Office. Major northern European ports such as Antwerp and Rotterdam have been so riven by drug violence that democracy itself has been threatened. , with the gangs even daring to plot the kidnapping of the Belgian Minister of Justice.With gunfights in the streets of Antwerp, the chief prosecutor in Brussels, Johan Delmol, warns that the country may soon be “considered a drug state.”The plateaus of Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, where the coca leaves from which the drug is extracted are grown And in Catatumbo in northeastern Colombia, Jose del Carmen Abril relies on coca to feed his eight children: “Coca… has replaced a government that wasn’t much present here,” said the 53-year-old. “We helped build schools and centers health, roads and homes.

In a country where many earn no more than $7 (6.5 euros) a day, coca growers can earn five times that amount. But Del Carmen April rages at being called a “drug,” saying that farmers like him “don’t even make minimum wages.” Despite the billions Washington and Bogota have spent over the decades in their “war on drugs,” peasants continue to grow more and more coca, with yields rising 14 percent in 2021 to an all-time high of 1,400 tons, according to the “Chemists”. The leaves are shredded with benzene, lime, cement and ammonium sulfate to make a white paste which is then ground into a powder in pharmaceutical laboratories. In Katatumbo, the dough sells for $370 a kilo. Once mixed with a mixture of acids and solvents it becomes “coke” worth over $1,000 a kilo.

Mexican cartels supply two-thirds of the world’s cocaine to Colombia. But the fall of the Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s, and a peace agreement signed in 2016 with the Marxist rebels FARC, turned the trade on its head. Once mere middlemen, Mexican cartels have since seized almost complete control of the market, from financing production to overseeing cocaine trafficking. . The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels initially focused on their “natural” market, the United States, before shifting their focus to Europe, where cocaine consumption was rampant. Europol estimates that the cocaine market in Europe is now worth between €7.6 and €10.5 billion. At street level, the head of the French customs intelligence unit, Florian Cola, said: “The US market is saturated and coke is sold in Europe at 50 to 100 percent higher prices.” “Another advantage for traffickers is less deterrent prison sentences and multiple logistical options.”

Most of the cocaine crossing the Atlantic is carried in containers, hidden in perfectly legal shipments of bananas, sugar or canned food, with the rest coming by air stashed in suitcases or in drug bellies. Some even come by sea in remote-controlled submarines, like the one captured by Spanish police in July. Mexican cartels established their European beachhead on Spain’s Costa del Sol in the early 2000s, which was already the main transportation hub for Moroccan hashish. . But the capture of several major smugglers and, above all, the explosion in sea traffic convinced them to redirect smuggling through the giant container ports of northern Europe such as Antwerp, Hamburg, Le Havre and Rotterdam. “Some shipments pass through Caribbean ports” on their way from South America, while others “pass through the Balkans or West Africa before entering Europe,” said Corinne Cleostrat, vice president of French customs.

Huge Profits: The traffickers follow a well laid out “plan of action,” selling Mexican cartels to European multinational crime syndicates, sometimes via middlemen who split shipments to spread costs and risks. “The deals) can be competitive. But they also create alliances to pool their strengths and expertise to get drugs,” Cherbonnier said. The Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta divide the market according to their regions and jurisdiction, but they traffic the drugs through the ports using local criminals, with a strict division of roles. A kilo of cocaine bought for $1,000 in South America can sell for 35,000 euros ($37,600) in Europe. Once out of port and cut with other materials, it will be sold to customers for €70 a gram, and its value has increased nearly 100-fold by the time it hits the street. Such huge profits allow for a huge war. The fund is to buy dockworkers, freight forwarders, truck drivers, and sometimes customs and police officers, to get cocaine out of ports. Many French dockworkers have been jailed for working with drug cartels in Le Havre, with police saying some were forced to help. One described to his lawyer how it was ingested. “Before that I made 200 or 300 euros a month selling (stolen) perfumes or packets of cigarettes. One day some men asked me to take out some bags (from the port) for 1,000 euros a bag.” Gangs are willing to pay up to €100,000 to get a container out of Le Havre, he said, as “we’re only paid.” Some dockers are paid to let containers out or move containers full of drugs out of range of security cameras, the customs officer admitted. In Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, police officers and agents surprise a group of local foot soldiers for smugglers hiding in a “container hotel” with food and bedding awaiting the arrival of a shipment of cocaine.

In this file photo taken on November 7, 2022, a French customs officer checks a package suspected of being cocaine at Orly Airport, south of Paris. (AFP)

Royals targeted As well as buying complicity and silence Huge sums to be made have fueled extreme violence in port cities in northern Europe Antwerp – the main gateway for illegal drugs into Europe – has recorded more than 200 incidents of drug-related violence in the last five accidents. A year ago, an 11-year-old girl died last week after being shot at a house in the residential neighborhood of Al-Marqasem. In the Netherlands, gangs have gone even further. On July 6, 2021, renowned investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries was shot multiple times in an underground car park moments after appearing on a TV talk show. He died nine days later. One of his sources specialized in the crimes was the key witness against drug lord Radwan Taghi, the suspected head of the “Mokro Mafia” who was arrested in Dubai in 2019. “We have moved to another level of violence altogether,” said Belgian police chief Snwick. “They have no qualms about torturing someone for information or simply executing someone who didn’t live up to a contract… It sends chills down your spine.”In 2020 Dutch police discovered containers that had been turned into a dungeon and torture chamber, and last year a hack led to The encrypted Sky ECC secure messaging app used by gangs to give insight into their ruthlessness, with people put in meat grinders or executed live on video, the cocaine mafia will do anything to protect their business.No one is safe.Belgian police uncover plot to kidnap justice minister in the country in September, and Dutch Crown Princess Amalia and Prime Minister Mark Rutte were said to have been targeted late last year.

Only ten were captured

But the authorities were responding aggressively by improving port security, intelligence cooperation and “targeting” the best dogs that led to record seizures, with 109.9 tonnes of cocaine intercepted in Antwerp last year. But also that the flow of drugs is increasing, ”admitted the head of the French customs Cleostrat. As a rule, experts suspect that only a tenth of the cocaine shipped to Europe has been seized. But Geir Scheringa, who heads the Dutch customs investigations in Rotterdam, said that more and more of ‘Automation of freight stations makes it difficult’ for smugglers They are already diverting shipments to smaller, less guarded ports such as Monttoir-de-Bretagne in northwest France, where more than 600 kilograms of ‘coke’ were in 2022 European police forces have also investigated Huge successes, claiming to have decapitated the “supercartel” responsible for smuggling a third of the continent’s cocaine, with 49 suspects being held in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain and, most of all, Dubai, one of the drug lords’ favorite places.But On the front line in the Caribbean, French customs officers in Martinique still keep an eye on ships heading north from South America far from satisfied.” The smugglers know our methods… We’re trying our best but you realize we can’t have it all,” admitted the island’s chief of customs, Jean-Charles Metevier. “We’re often one step behind.” Meanwhile, in Paris, business and competition are brisk. “Sudden Sale!” announces a message sent by a merchant on WhatsApp: “Fifty euros a gram.”

What Are The Main Benefits Of Comparing Car Insurance Quotes Online

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 24, 2020, / Compare-autoinsurance.Org has launched a new blog post that presents the main benefits of comparing multiple car insurance quotes. For more info and free online quotes, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/the-advantages-of-comparing-prices-with-car-insurance-quotes-online/ The modern society has numerous technological advantages. One important advantage is the speed at which information is sent and received. With the help of the internet, the shopping habits of many persons have drastically changed. The car insurance industry hasn't remained untouched by these changes. On the internet, drivers can compare insurance prices and find out which sellers have the best offers. View photos The advantages of comparing online car insurance quotes are the following: Online quotes can be obtained from anywhere and at any time. Unlike physical insurance agencies, websites don't have a specific schedule and they are available at any time. Drivers that have busy working schedules, can compare quotes from anywhere and at any time, even at midnight. Multiple choices. Almost all insurance providers, no matter if they are well-known brands or just local insurers, have an online presence. Online quotes will allow policyholders the chance to discover multiple insurance companies and check their prices. Drivers are no longer required to get quotes from just a few known insurance companies. Also, local and regional insurers can provide lower insurance rates for the same services. Accurate insurance estimates. Online quotes can only be accurate if the customers provide accurate and real info about their car models and driving history. Lying about past driving incidents can make the price estimates to be lower, but when dealing with an insurance company lying to them is useless. Usually, insurance companies will do research about a potential customer before granting him coverage. Online quotes can be sorted easily. Although drivers are recommended to not choose a policy just based on its price, drivers can easily sort quotes by insurance price. Using brokerage websites will allow drivers to get quotes from multiple insurers, thus making the comparison faster and easier. For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ Compare-autoinsurance.Org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. "Online quotes can easily help drivers obtain better car insurance deals. All they have to do is to complete an online form with accurate and real info, then compare prices", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: [email protected]: https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ SOURCE: Compare-autoinsurance.Org View source version on accesswire.Com:https://www.Accesswire.Com/595055/What-Are-The-Main-Benefits-Of-Comparing-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Online View photos