Narco-submarines, torpedoes and squid: How drug cartels are adapting to coronavirus lockdowns worldwide

Luke Taylor in Bogota reports on the challenges drug traffickers face from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the innovative solutions some have found to get around them

The volume of drugs seized this year is significantly down on the same period last year, as traffickers stockpile supplies waiting for lockdowns to end (UNODC)

Prying open a container in the port of Antwerp, Belgian customs officers were sure they were about to uncover a massive drugs bust: five tonnes of cocaine from South America was supposed to be inside. But when they pried it open, all they found was a pile of squid.

The flummoxed officials discovered the cartels had been one step ahead, swapping out the illicit cargo upon arrival at port and before it could be checked by customs. While the officers realised what happened and got the drugs in the end, the bizarre episode shows the lengths and ingenuity that cartels will go to in order to keep the $85bn (£68bn) cocaine trade alive during global lockdowns.

Anti-narcotics police have foiled various novel schemes in recent months intended to overcome the challenges posed by lockdowns – or take advantage of them.

“Cocaine is one of the most adaptable industries around and every time it mutates, like evolution, it becomes a little stronger learning from its mistakes,” says Toby Muse, author of Kilo: Inside the Cocaine Cartels, a book documenting cocaine’s bloody journey across the world. “This is a temporary disruption, but it will be back.”

The global shutdown has thrust new obstacles in front of every stage of the cocaine trade, from its production in remote drug labs in Colombia’s dense jungles, to its purchase on the eerie streets of locked-down London.

“From the production to the trafficking, and those using the drugs, this is affecting the entire chain,” says Bob Van den Berghe, regional coordinator for the UN Container Programme in Latin America and the Caribbean. The programme trains and supports national police forces across the world in anti-narcotics intelligence.

In Colombia, where 70 per cent of the world’s cocaine originates, the cost of production is up – by as much as 43 per cent in one state, Vichada, according to a Colombia national police report. Peasant farmers growing coca – the drug’s base ingredient – in the jungles of the Andean nation are struggling to get their hands on the chemicals needed. Supplies of petrol, one of those ingredients, has been disrupted by events next door in crisis-stricken Venezuela.

When it comes to trafficking the drugs, even the simplest leg of the global operation has suddenly become more risky. A nationwide lockdown has been in force in Colombia since 23 March and all land, sea and air borders have been closed. Fewer cars and trucks on the tarmac means those vehicles that are transporting drugs to shipping ports from source regions are more exposed – just as the military and police are out in larger numbers to enforce curfews.

“It’s just one example of how quarantines increase control and interception of the drug trade,” says Angela Me, director of research at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The two key modus operandi of drug traffickers to get illicit drugs overseas, say researchers, are commercial flights and overseas cargo, but with airports shut down they have been forced to try their luck on the seas. And with the volume of cargo transport used to camouflage the drugs down, the risk of illegal shipments being detected is higher.

The most pioneering of traffickers are eliminating the risk of their shipments being searched almost entirely, instead using highly engineered, tailor-made solutions.

In recent years there has been an increase in the use of “ninjas”, ships where crews receive the product on board from a smaller vessel once it has departed, and “torpedoes”, where divers attach metal containers packed with illicit substances to the underside of boats for other divers to collect them at their destination.

Likely the most sophisticated – and an increasingly popular solution – used by criminal groups are “narco-submarines”, low-profile vessels capable of submerging to avoid detection.

The US navy and coast guard intercepted three such vessels in just four days in mid-May, each carrying about 1,350kg of cocaine.

“I believe such solutions [torpedoes, submarines, ninjas] are increasingly favoured during the pandemic despite the additional risk posed by less activity on the seas,” said Van den Berghe.

Other cartels lack either the means or the risk appetite for such methods. Since national lockdowns were enforced, drug enforcement authorities across Latin America and Europe have reported a significant decrease in cocaine seizures as cartels minimise risks.

“There has been a very substantial drop [in trafficking] since restrictions were in place,” says Van den Berghe.

Almost 27 tonnes have been confiscated this year according to UNODC, with 23 tonnes believed to have been on their way to Europe. That compares to a total of almost 35 tonnes confiscated in the same period last year.

Just as panic sent many consumers stockpiling toilet roll and hand soap, the more cautious armed gangs are hoarding cocaine in warehouses and laboratories rather than risk losing it.

Preempting the lockdowns, the cartels also sent a wave of mammoth shipments through before they were introduced.

“I think based on seizures of bigger than usual shipments of cocaine, it would be fair to say that Europe was flooded with cocaine ahead of lockdowns,” Van den Berghe says.

Meanwhile, others are using the pandemic to their advantage. Piggybacking off a boom in demand for certain products like medical supplies and toys is one way the cartels have adapted to the pandemic and fooled authorities, says Insight Crime, a think tank monitoring organised crime in Latin America.

On 16 April, 14kg of cocaine with a street value of £1m was found hidden inside face masks on their way to the UK. And in May, a van with £25m of cocaine hidden in fake medical supplies was stopped on its way to Britain from France.

Despite the smaller volume of goods flowing across the globe, it remains an immense task detecting drug shipments, say anti-narcotics officials.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, without intelligence we would be lost,” said a senior Colombian naval official who requested not be named. Only able to search around 2 per cent of shipping containers, anti-narcotics police must profile and select them carefully.

A shortage of supply in Europe is already incentivising greater gambles to compensate for the greater risk. The wholesale price of cocaine at a port in the Netherlands has surged from €25,000 to €32,000 per kilo, according to Insight Crime’s co-director Jeremy McDermott.

And as anti-narcotics units adapt to new business models, they are already preparing themselves for an expected explosion in drug shipments whenever normality resumes, with cartels seeking to make up for lost profit and offload the masses of drugs piling up in Latin America.

“This is something we have to anticipate: that once the situation goes back to normal we suspect some large quantities will leave the port in one go,” said Van den Berghe. “The crisis has a negative impact on organised crime in the short term but the health and economic crises also create new opportunities for criminal groups to exploit.”