Europe's largest crystal meth bust: Rotterdam find nets 2,500 kilos
Investigators discovered a massive 2,500 kilograms of crystal meth in a hidden space in Rotterdam building last week, the police said in a statement on Wednesday. The meth has a street value of hundreds of millions of euros. "This quantity has not been found before in the Netherlands and even Europe", the police said.
After extensive investigation, the police entered the business premises in Rotterdam. The officers did not immediately find anything suspicious, but did notice that the inside dimensions of the upper floor were smaller than the outside dimensions. Closer examination revealed that a front wall was built over the width of the building with a hidden spice behind it. Behind the double wall, the police found a large number of bags, all containing methamphetamine, better known as crystal meth.
The drugs were seized and destroyed.
The investigation continued after this massive find and it led the police to a warehouse in Utrecht. There they found a total of 17,500 liters of chemicals used for washing cocaine and the production of synthetic drugs, as well as hollowed out rocks which the police believe were used to smuggle drugs.
The investigation is still ongoing. The police did not say where exactly the Rotterdam building or Utrecht warehouse are located. Whether any arrests were made is unclear.
Crystal meth production seems to be on the rise in the Netherlands. The police are finding more and more meth labs and believe that Mexican drug cartels are trying to push the highly-addictive and dangerous drug in Western Europe, police sources told newspaper AD earlier this month.
Last month the police found a crystal meth lab on a large river boat in Moerdijk in Noord-Brabant. Three people from Mexico were arrested. In February two Mexicans were arrested in a crystal meth lab in Wateringen. According to AD, one of these two suspects comes from the Sinaloa region, where a drug cartel is active. On June 2nd, the police dismantled a crystal meth lab in The Hague, though whether this lab has any link to Mexico is not clear.
