How does drug trafficking work in low corruption countries like Sweden and Switzerland?

9 comments

1. As a Dutch person: we have a massive import and export market, with countless container ships coming into Rotterdam from all over the world. There simply is no way to check all of them for illicit cargo, especially if it’s well-hidden. Once it’s in the Netherlands, moving it across Schengen countries (including Switzerland) is pretty easy, especially if you make sure not to draw attention and move illicit goods along with legitimate products to ensure your entire reason for hauling stuff around rings no alarm bells. So the game isn’t about bribes here, it’s about staying under the radar. The Dutch government regularly prides itself in yet another ‘biggest drug bust ever’ but that is by no means a good thing, as it only means that the criminals are willing to take ever bigger risks because apparently we just aren’t paying enough attention.

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   Edit to clarify: I’m a law abiding citizen, so no actual smuggling experience, but I do have the experience of travelling all around Schengen and I can assure you, nothing ever gets checked. I’ve been pulled over crossing a border twice (Germany to Denmark and Slovakia to Czech Republic). Both instances they only wanted to see my driver’s licence and car registration as I drive a pretty old and thus unusual car. Never has my luggage been checked. Imagine doing this in a super common car, wearing decent clothes. Nobody is every going to check anything within Schengen borders.

2. Its basically just about hiding it. Tons of cargo are pulled all around Schengen and can’t all be checked. Alternatively, just put a middle aged white women into an Mercedes A-Klasse and put a “Sylt”-Sticker on the back and not a single borderguard in Germany will even think about checking the car.

3. There have been cases of corruption in the police forces in Zürich and Geneva, it’s not like it doesn’t exist at all.

   And as mentionned below: there are billions of $ of goods and over a million people that cross the border between Switzerland and the EU per day, how do you want to check all of it? It’s just physically impossible.

4. I don’t think criminals work differently in Europe compared to other countries. Bribing happens here as well. Intimidating is another known method. There are several cases of customs employees working in the ports who are either bribed to cooperate or intimidated. Lately there are stories of farmers being forced to ‘lend’ a barn to drugs crime organizations as well. According to many police reports criminals are likely to target vulnerable people. For example people with debt problems. Offer them a one time gig to earn some extra cash and after that they have leverage so people are sucked into the world of organized crime.

5. I would assume most drug dealers would actively take as many steps as possible to ensure no officials were involved at all!!

   From reading the news and documentaries on these things, they are smuggled in. So on private boats, in containers under different labelling, in the boots of cars, etc.

   The whole point is to avoid the officials.

6. Ship it to more corrupt countries in the Schengen area and you’re fine. Once inside Schengen territory, goods can move freely and are very rarely checked.

   Let’s say you get your drugs into Rotterdam or Hamburg by ship, you can just put em on a truck and drive them all the way to Abisko if you want.

7. I’ll answer about weapons, not drugs, but it’s probably similar.

   Sweden has a lot of illegal, smuggled weapons. Not as in every moron has one, but as in gangs have no problems getting their hands on guns. How do these guns get in? Well, often someone just drives them in. The critical factor is that most of Europe has no border checks of goods or people. You can drive from Lisbon to Stockholm without being subject to any checks.

   Weapons smuggled into Sweden often originate in former Yugoslavia, where the wars of the 90s left more than enough weapons to supply every gang in the EU. If someone goes to Bosnia and picks up a couple duffel bags with weapons and ammo, all they have to do is cross into Croatia without being caught and from there it’s easy to drive to Sweden. There are some sporadic customs checks at select locations, for example the bridge between Sweden and Denmark sees some cars checked. But the traffic volume there is way too high to check most cars so most smuggling surely goes undetected.

   Then there’s the postal route, which I know also applies to drugs. A lot of illegal stuff can be ordered online and there’s again the volume problem – even if the packages are coming from outside EU, the customs can only check a small fraction of them, with pretty much no checks if they’re EU packages. You can’t generally get an automatic rifle that way but some parts for a gun or a smaller quantity of some drug? That is definitely possible.

   The US-Mexico border isn’t just about bribery either. It’s a long border that can be illegally crossed in many places despite the great effort the US expends to secure it. The outer EU/Schengen borders are even harder to secure because they’re longer than the US-Mexico one and many parts have poor visibility. US-Mexico is mostly desert, while borders such as Poland-Russia, Bulgaria-Macedonia or Lithuania-Belarus are forests. Say, [this is a photo from just inside Poland and the treeline is in Russia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Powiat_go%C5%82dapski_Granica_Polska-Rosja_001.JPG). Not exactly a border where you’d see someone approach an hour before they get there.

8. I’ve rewad about 50 true crime books about drugsmuggling in Europe, so I will explain this per topic.

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   1. Smuggling routes. You have basically the harbours of Rotterdam and Antwetrp as cargohubs used for drugs. Then you have important routes like The Afghan- Iran -Turkey-Bulgariar route for heroine. And you have important links in Albania, Napels and Marseille
   2. Smuggling is done in numerous ways. The South America coke smuggling business is done by cargo mostlly though for smaller volumes mules are send with condomlike balloons in their stomach filled with coke. With cargo shipping their are different ways, either you hide tyhe coke in a product like letting liquid coke being absolved in clothing or other chemicasls. Alternatively you ship it with other cargo of which fruit (because its a product that easily rots and should be handled fastly) is quite popular. Either the South American fruit companies are dummies set up by crime organisations in SA or the drugs is put their without the original company knowing a thing.
   In such cases you can do three things: 1. You bribe the handlers of the cargo 2. You send your own crew to illgeally tresspass at the harbor and get it out 34. you bribe costums or police involved with check-ups. Less used ways is to fake cargoducoments, to send mules in the containers themselves or to use imitate containers
   3. Another technique used is to bribe a crew on a cargoship to hide the coke on board. What they can do is ogffload it with personal items once docking somehwhere, this is risky. Alternatively you can dispose cokepackages at sea when for example bribed fishermen are tthere or you can throw away packages of coke in a harbour that can be collected by radiowavessignals by divers
   4. The falternative ways of smuggling are with non commercial traffic llike big personal sailing yaughs that sail around the world
   5. Getting the stuff effectively into Sweden or Switzerland is using the right mules. One of the best ways is just use big holidaying families that bring wife and kids and have their car or campercaravan packed to the rafters with stuff. Customes is mostly less likely to turn everything over though potentially they still can.

   So how do people get caught brining in drugs, well mostly because they hgave drawn attention in a wrong way. This can be in looks, in giving vague stories tto customs, this can be by hacked communications or withnesses or badly filled in forms, or being in in contact with people with the wrong background. My theorie is that for the avarage joe is dead easy to smuggle drugs within Shengen zone and never get caught, all it takes is planning and discuiipline.

9. In Estonia, low corruption does not really help that much as a surprising amount of drugs are locally produced (a few fentanyl makers, first one discovered in 2017; opportunistic cannabis growers) or just ordered online in smaller amounts (MDMA, LSD, cocaine, some cannabis) and no-one can really check all packages to such degree.

   As others have said, there is no real problem with transporting anything within the EU. Of course some things get smuggled over from Russia, but we are not talking about cars full of drugs here, but more like one bottle that was missed. Most of the drugs either enter EU elsewhere or are just produced here.

   Our drug users and drug use patterns are also very different than that of the US.