The Correctional Court in Leuven on Tuesday sentenced members of a Belgian-Dutch gang to prison terms of between five and seven years for drug trafficking.
Seven of the nine were found guilty, while a man and a woman were acquitted. The gang was fined a total of €112,000 and just under €3 million euros in profits were forfeited.
The prosecutor’s office detected the drug trafficking following a data tap on the message service Sky ECC. The defendants sent photos and videos of cocaine shipments on the platform, a common practice according to police authorities.
Investigators found that they shipped drugs to Belgium through two fruit transport companies. The gang laundered money earned through crypto coins. On 30 and 31 March, Belgian, Dutch and Spanish police carried out raids at nine locations.
The gang set up at least 21 cocaine lines and two hashish lines, where they received up to €180 million in profits. Cocaine was transported by ship from Ecuador and Colombia to the ports of Antwerp and Ghent, but also to other ports, including in the Netherlands. There were even shipments which came in through airports.
The traffickers hid the compressed blocks among fruit, such as bananas. In one case, the cargo went rotten and it was not sent, with the gang having then tried to recover €480,000 from the transport company, according to the prosecutor.
According to the court, there was a criminal organisation in which people had different roles. One had contacts in the Port of Antwerp, the other contacts on the other side of the Atlantic. There would also be a logistics and financial organiser.
