THE SUN
GESTURING toward the mist-shrouded port of Antwerp, one-time master drug smuggler Paul Meyer insists its security is “leaky as a sieve”.
Known as The Tall Dutch Guy in international drug-trafficking circles, Paul says he once moved industrial quantities of narcotics through the Belgian container port with nonchalant ease.
Sipping an espresso, the 60-year-old former cocaine, heroin and hashish smuggler told me: “Every five or six weeks we did 20 tons. When you deliver, it’s party time.
“Whether it’s cocaine or hashish or something else, if you want it through the port without authorities looking inside the container then Antwerp is the best place to do it.”
Once better known for its cobbled old town and diamond district, Antwerp now labours under the unwanted label of Europe’s cocaine capital.
So much of the so-called white gold was seized at the container port last year that a vast “cocaine-berg” built up, with incinerators unable to burn the drug quick enough.
In its wake has come the bloodshed and mayhem of warring narco gangs using the port as a waystation to get cocaine to the UK and across Europe.
This month an 11-year-old girl, named as Firdaous El J, died in Antwerp after being caught in the crossfire of a suspected drugs feud.
Last year Bledar Muca, 39, an Albanian with false British papers, was assassinated in cold blood, with a shocking image of the gun-toting hitman caught on camera.
And 25 miles across the Dutch border from central Antwerp, a narco gang built a sound- proofed torture chamber to menace rivals or those who double-crossed them.
