Urk fishing boats involved in drug trafficking on Danish waters

At least six fishing boats from Urk are involved in cocaine smuggling in Danish waters, the Danish public broadcaster TV2 reported after researching the drug trafficking for two years. According to the broadcaster, drug criminals from the Amsterdam underworld who have ties with South American cartels are paying the Urk cutter fishermen for the cocaine smuggling.

The drugs are dumped from container ships from South America into the North Sea with a GPS transmitter. The Urk fishers fish the packages out of the water and ship them to Danish ports, from where they are transported to the Netherlands by road. There, the drugs are cut and transported further into Europe, according to the broadcaster, which analyzed sailing routes, spoke with involved people in the Danish ports, and interviewed an anonymous Dutch fisherman.

According to the broadcaster, it concerns at least six fishing cutters from Urk. Its analysis showed that the cutters switch off their own position signal at sea. It saw the fishing boats lay still for a long time in the same place as if they were waiting for something, while other cutters zig-zag back and forth, presumably to be less conspicuous. The stationary cutter then follows a container ship, stops, and returns to port.

The anonymous Dutch fisherman told TV2 that smuggling occurs in Danish waters because the controls are less strict than in the Netherlands. According to him, the drug criminals offer fishermen large amounts. “If you can get 100,000 euros to ‘help them a little,’ then you say yes. What would you do if you saw that much money?”

It starts with small quantities of around 50 kilograms of cocaine, which quickly increases to over 100,000 kilograms, he said. And once you’re in, there’s no getting out, the fisherman said. “They will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Mayor Cees van den Bos (SGP) of Urk would not give a detailed response to the Danish investigation yet. But he told Omroep Flevoland that he was “not immediately shocked” by the news. “As a municipality, we have been alert to these kinds of signals for some time. It happens, we face it honestly, and we are not going to brush it off.” He called it vital to protect the fishing industry in Urk against criminal influences. “We have a very strong economy here, and we will not let criminals hijack it.”