€600 million cocaine shipment found at Rotterdam port; largest drug bust ever in NL

Customs officials in the port of Rotterdam made the largest drug bust ever in the Netherlands on Thursday. A total of 8,064 packages, each containing 1 kilo of cocaine, were retrieved from 12 banana pallets, the Public Prosecution Service announced on Thursday. The street value was estimated at 600 million euros.

The container originated from Ecuador and arrived in Rotterdam via Panama. The drugs were discovered during a check with drug-sniffing dogs. The drugs have since been destroyed. The case is currently being investigated by the HARC team, a collaboration between the FIOD (Fiscal Information and Investigation Service), Customs, the Seaport Police, and the Public Prosecution Service.

Peter van Buijtenen, the customs director in the port of Rotterdam, praised the professionalism of the customs workers on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "Once again, we've managed, along with our HARC partners, to deal a significant blow to the drug criminals in the port."

Outgoing State Secretary of Financy Aukje de Vries praised the customs and their partners, stating, "Thanks to their professionalism, they have seized over 8,000 kilos of cocaine, the largest drug bust so far this year!" Outgoing Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz also expressed her satisfaction, saying, "We are intensifying our efforts against drug criminals in many different areas. And this is one of the results. Hugely proud of the close collaboration among our services," Yeşilgöz added.

This cocaine seizure shatters the previous record set in 2005 when 4,600 kilos of the drug were found in the port of Rotterdam. At that time, the cocaine was hidden within two large reels of steel cables. The largest cocaine bust of this year, prior to this, took place at the end of June. Customs found more than 3,500 blocks of cocaine hidden among bananas, with the container also originating from Ecuador.

In the first half of this year, a total of 29,702 kilos of cocaine were seized during drug seizures in the Netherlands. Data from Dutch customs indicates that over half of the intercepted shipments weighed less than 100 kilos each. This suggests that criminals are spreading their risk, as Customs explained last month while discussing the mid-year figures.