June 15, 2024 • 34 mins
Europe’s vast ports act as logistic hubs in a worldwide operation that relies on corruption and torture.
In the Netherlands, Fiona Hamilton reveals the industrial scale of the cocaine business - and how it always leads to violence.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Look money cops. The extra money's black money, going out,
spending money in e glips. You have enough money, you
can do what you want. Then you're for yourself a king.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This world, the underworld, has a different set of standards
and morals. Sometimes it can get a little bit dodgy.
I think that's the best way to describe it.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm in the Netherlands, where vout Allowman's one of the
top Dutch crime reporters, has been explaining in the last
episode how the cocaine business made his country a very
violent place for a time. In twenty twenty, his contacts
in the criminal underworld gave him a tip it would
lead him to break one of the darkest stories of
(00:52):
his career. It's about a man called Roger p better
known by his nickname Pete Costa.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We don't know that much about him. He was a
regular kind of guy. He was born in nineteen seventy one.
He's a guy who grew up in Rotterdam, and he's
a flyer, a the arraider kind of guy, an average joe.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
But that was a facade.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
He went to call for a few robberies in the past,
and people in the criminal world say he was making
speed like amphetamines, but he wasn't like a big drug
figure until in the Naughtiest That's when his star kind
of grew.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Roger P eventually served jail time for armed robbery and
assault in two thousand and six, but he was released
a few years later and began to travel regularly to
Latin America.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
He settles in Costa Rica, where he's involved in pineapple trade,
and that's how he got his nickname pic Costa because
it was in Costa Rica, and that's where he started
sending large quantities of cocaine to the port of Rotterdam.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Soon, Rotterdam would become one of the main gateways through
which cocaine was smuggled into Europe and Roger P's operation
would expand into planned kidnappings, murder and torture. I'm Fiona
(02:34):
Hamilton and from The Times, The Sunday Times and News
Corp Australia. This is Cocaine Inc. Episode four, The Pineapple Trader. Okay,
so far in this series you've only heard from me
(02:55):
at the start and the end of each episode. But
it's time I properly introduced myself and tell you why
I care about this investigation. I've been a reporter for
more than twenty years, covering crime for more than half
that time. I was actually born in England, but brought
(03:15):
up in Australia, where I started out working on regional
newspapers in beautiful coastal areas near Brisbane in Queensland. I
made the move to the UK to try and get
a job on Fleet Street stay here for a few years.
Fifteen years later, I'm still at the Times. One of
the first big pieces I wrote for The Times was
about a cocaine dealer in London. He spoke so casually
(03:39):
about fighting over territory and his chances of getting what
he called wetted up which means knife in the process.
This young lad, Michael, he won strength of being a firefighter,
but now aged nineteen, he wanted to make enough money
to put him in the director's seat, as he called it,
you know, being the top dog run other kids dealing coke.
(04:02):
I've reported on so many Michaels since then. I've written
about record drug bus Government promises to crack down on
Class A drugs and community initiatives to offer more activities
and diversions for those involved in selling them, but it
all feels like a bit of a broken record. Privately,
(04:24):
some of the police chiefs I talk to say it's
like an arcade game. One dealer gets arrested, but another
pops up in their place, and it's a game that
we are badly losing. I don't know what Michael's doing
these days, if he's even alive. But of course there
are hundreds and thousands of Michaels across the world, all
(04:45):
of them looking to sell cocaine. So how do they
get it?
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Well?
Speaker 3 (04:50):
That brings us to the next part of the multinational
business model, distribution.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Tell me what you had for breakfast? I can get
your sound levels.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Oh, this morning I had to breakfast I take from
Yochot with Chrisley, so that's normally my breakfast.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Okay, lovely, this is Hare.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
We have a big problem in the port of Rotterdam
with cocaine.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
He's the leader of the hit and Run Cargo team
in Rotterdam, a specialist unit combining customs, police, public prosecutors
and intelligence. We can only use his first name to
protect his family's safety. Hair is no stranger to cocaine
bus it's.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Every year, about two hundred times, so I think I
have more than one thy to fifteen hundred times we
find the drugs in the last years, so for me
it's quite normal.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Last year, almost sixty tons of cocaine was seized across
the Netherlands, including a single massive eight tons seizure made
right here at the port in Rotterdam. Officials laid out
the hall in a warehouse with fat blocks of cocaine
stacked one on top of the other, wrapped in plastic sacks.
It looked like it would fill the laurry easily, a
(06:13):
truly industrial quantity.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
There are a lot of products who are produced in
South America, so fruit and vegetables is one of the
common ways to bring the drugs into containers. Only maybe
ten or twenty percent of all the cocaine it's coming
in to port of rotter Image destinated for the Netherlands,
and the rest of the cocaine is distributed somewhere to Europe,
(06:38):
for example, to Great Britain. The last few years we
see a lot of ripoff. A ripoff, it's meaning that
you have regular goods and somewhere in the logistical chain
they opened the container, they put in some bags with
drugs extra, they close the container, again, make a new
seal on it, send it to Rotterdam, and somebody in
(07:02):
Rotterdam must open the container and take out the drugs
before the regular cargo is going to its destination.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
To do that, the correct shipping container needs to be
located by the drug gang among the thousands of containers.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Moving through the port daily.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe. But imagine you're
part of the cocaine smuggling operation. It's your job to
find the shipping container with the drugs in it. Everywhere
you look there's towers of containers, So how do you
find that needle in a haystack?
Speaker 5 (07:45):
All the people are working somewhere in the port, so
they need somebody from inside for have information.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
So I've left the hotel in Rotterdam this morning. It's
a lovely sunny day. Very quickly the city landscape of
Rotterdam has given way to a massive industrial area, big
puffs of smoke going into the air from refineries and warehouses.
There's about eight lanes of traffic going in all sorts
(08:20):
of different directions, trucks zipping past me every couple of seconds.
Just getting more and more of a sense of how
quickly goods.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Are moved through this port.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
So I've just got out the car and I'm looking
across a quite large canal to one of the terminals.
But there's four or five of these terminals here, leading
all the way out to the North Sea. I'm looking
to my right and i can see one, two, three
of these absolutely gigantic ships filled with thousands of containers.
(09:07):
And I'm really really getting the sense of the scale
here of how much product is moved into this port
every single day. I mean, I've been covering stories on
drugs for many, many years and speaking about the sometimes
futile battle, and perhaps I get a new sense of
the futility of it looking at this place and how
(09:29):
enormous it is.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I mean, the best way to get cocaine into a
country is if you have corrupt guys at customs.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
This is about Allowman's again, the Dutch crime reporter who
was telling us about Roger p the cocaine dealer who
made a fortune importing the drug from Latin America. Every year,
fourteen million containers moved through the port. Unsurprisingly, the authorities
aren't able to search everyone for illegal drugs and other contraband.
(10:05):
In fact, they're only able to check about one percent.
So with the help of someone in the port, it's
not hard to see how guys like Roger P with
his pineapple containers can have their shipments missed or wave through.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
There's a department and it's called pre arrival, and that's
where they decide which container gets checked and which container
doesn't get checked. If you want to use some jargon,
that's like putting a container on green. People working there
for him they knew which containers were coming in and.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
They would put them on green.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And that was like a lottery that you can't lose
because then you can just send containers full of drugs
through customs because you know they're not going to be checked.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Back in twenty sixteen, authorities managed to intercept three point
seven tons of cocaine, which they trace back to Roger P,
also known by his nickname Pete Costa. In fact, Vouter
uses the name interchangeably. What really matters here, though, is
that three point seven tons of cocaine.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Is probably enough to fill a decent sized truck from
the floor to the ceiling.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
To smuggle an amount of cocaine that big, you have
to be very sure of yourself, because that's a lot
of money.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So are you able to introduce yourself for the purpose
of this podcast and.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Tell me who you are?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yes, of course, and we're not using your real name,
we're giving you the pseudonym case.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Are you able to say why that is.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
My own?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Chiefly I'm in a hotel room in Rotterdam. Case is
an ex harbor worker. He's hunched over. He seems a
little nervous because he wants helped smuggle cocaine through this
very port, now retired. Case was twenty six when he
first started his transport company back in the eighties.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Although they never worked together.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I'm hoping that case can help me understand how someone
like Roger p could build up such a profitable operation.
Were you were aware that the port of Rotterdam was
a point for which there was a lot of illicit
drug smuggling?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yes, but nothing both so I didn't care.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
How did you know? Hey, so it's really in plain
so it's obvious it.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Was in plain Sat at that time. It was a
plain Sat. Yes, can you give me everybody who was
working in the port knows it. You're here, that's coming in.
You see some companies growing like hell, this is impossible
that they were growing so quickly because you were in
the same business. So you know what the prophets I
and yeah, what you can spend.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Although he knew it was happening. For ten years or so,
Case ran his company legally. He earned good living and
enjoyed the work. But one day a friend came asking
for a favor.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
He had some problems with the import of an container,
and he asked me to help him be imported to
contain it for him. Later on they came to the
office and they put a bag of money here for
the success. And well then I knew it was a
rug transport, of course, and from that time on that
(13:50):
was EU money, big money, how much mm more than
enough to buy a house.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
And from that moment you.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
Were in, and from that moment I was in.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Once in Case's experience of moving goods legally through the
port made him increasingly useful to his criminal business partners.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You know how the customs are working. That was kind
of containers. They will check, they will not check, and
then tell them how to do it. And you were imported.
I had my own lawes transported to this wherever they wanted.
Nobody who was in the business from from Dorgs. She
it as something criminal, just a cargo, just something to
(14:38):
buy and sell.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Business was booming, and eventually cases associates in the Netherlands
told him there was somebody who wanted to meet him,
somebody in Latin America.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So you go over there, meet the real people over
there and making agreement. How much you get for it?
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Do you feel comfortable saying where exactly you traveled to
meet people Mexico Columbia. Did you feel intimidated or fear
them when.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
You met them?
Speaker 1 (15:15):
No? No, one business men, their own company is over there.
It's not like what you see on television.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Very much a business model in the same way that
other commerce works.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah. Correct, Correct.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Were you feeling any financial pressure too? Did you need
a little bit more money?
Speaker 1 (15:33):
No?
Speaker 4 (15:34):
No, not really, but once you realized how easy.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It was, It was so easy to import without any problems,
and then yeah, right not.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
For twenty five to thirty years, Case lived two lives,
one with his legitimate business and the other running his
illicit operation.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Look and money corrects. The extra money is black money
going out spending money in the eclipse. You have enough money,
you can do what you want. Then you're for yourself
a king.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
But even a king knows nothing last forever. In time,
the police caught up with him. Case was arrested and
served six years in jail. He says he actually felt
good about it because although he'd been making money, he'd
also been feeling unable to escape the cocaine business.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
It looks stupid. Bit at the moment the police get you,
you get all through your freedom back when you start.
There is only one end. It could take one year,
could take ten years, can take twenty years. Within the
end you lose.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
You see a corruption everywhere in the public partners and
the private partners, also by customs. That's not good. That's true.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
This is Hair again, who leads a specialist unit tackling
corruption in Rotterdam. But he's not just dealing with low
level corrupt workers like Case. There's also corruption within the
customs authority itself.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
I was on a department where one of the colleagues
was corrupt. It's about six seven years ago, and this
colleague give information to a criminal organization about the containers
we want to control and we want not to control.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
After an investigation, Hair's colleague was exposed and ended up
going down for between eight and ten years.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
I was angry because, together with your team, you try
to stop the drugs, and when there is one of
your colleagues who is corrupt, and then you are looking
also to the other colleagues, Hey, what's happening over here?
Are you trustworthy or are you also corrupt? So that's
also very difficult.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Speaking to her.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
You can see how much this bothers him, how the
cocaine trade even corrupts those in the top law enforcement
teams who he should be able to rely on now
vout Allowmans. The crime reporter says Roger p had a
lot of corrupt people on his payroll in his cocaine
smuggling operation.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
He was working with all these guys and some of
them were responsible for stashing the cocaine, Others were protecting
money stashes, others were selling the cocaine. To have an
operation like that, you have to be a clever manager
as well. You can't just fuck about. You have to
know what you're doing in the underworld. He wasn't known
(18:45):
as a very violent guy. I think it was smart
enough to understand that violence breeds attention, and the thing
you don't want is attention.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
But being smart isn't always enough in the drug business.
Like any chief exec, there's some things you can predict
and some things you can't, like workplace conflicts when two
colleagues suddenly fall out.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
In around two thousand and twenty, he gets in a
massive conflict with somebody who used to work with and
he says, this guy, I made him a millionaire. He
went to Dubai, he spent all this money, and then
he decided to steal money from me. That's what Roger
P says in intercepted messages. Roger P says, this guy
(19:34):
stole money that was about one hundred million worth of
real estate and other stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
So Roger P launches an investigation into this former colleague.
He tells his employees to deal with it, but this
is no ordinary hr disciplinary process.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
They kidnapped the guy.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
The guy is obviously very scared and he promises to
make everything right.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So Pete Coster's associates release him. And that's a mistake
because rather than making everything right, someone very close to
Roger P ends up dead.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
In May twenty twenty, a guy named Ibrahim Azaim his
nickname is Ebo, gets murdered in Rotendam. He gets shot
and he was like Roger PAS's son. From what I heard,
it was very close to Roger P. So now Pete
(20:34):
Costa is involved in a violent conflict revolving around one
hundred million euros worth of real estate that.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
Was stolen from him and somebody he loved very much
got shot.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So when Roger p finds out, he drives from Spain
where he lives, to the Netherlands and there he gets
into contact with a guy and they decide that they
are going to retaliate. In the summer of twenty twenty,
(21:20):
I was working for a national newspaper. I was writing
about organized crime together with a Colleguemannon Mayus. We heard
stories that encro had fallen.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Vouters talking about Anchor Chat, a company that made sophisticated
encrypted devices disguised though like ordinary phones, the user could
access a secret messaging system. Set up in twenty sixteen,
It soon became the way criminals communicated across countries and
between continents. They all basically thought it was impenetrable, but
(21:57):
then in early twenty twenty, French and authorities began to
hack the system. A gigantic cyber investigation led to eight
hundred arrests across Europe.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The encrypted communication in which criminals thought that they were
free to speak, was intercepted in a legal way by
the French authorities.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Nique A police in Korchet.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
So far, they've arrested seven hundred and forty six suspects,
seized more than fifty four million pounds in cash, two
tons of cocaine, seventy seven firearms, and fifty five luxury cars.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So everywhere is like, oh fuck, what if this guy
talked about me?
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Or what have I sent? So it wasn't like panic,
but it was unrest.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I was talking to this guy who was like a
high up somebody who knows what's what in the underworld.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Because it's during the pandemic, Vowder has to go and
meet his source outside. They end up in an industrial estate.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
So we were standing at a parking area at one
of those places where you can buy like tools and
equipment and wood and stuff like that, and we were
talking about what was going on, and somebody got arrested,
and we were talking about the arrest and very casually
the guy says, all right, so if they found this,
(23:24):
they know about the torture seller.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
And I'm like, torture seller, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
You know?
Speaker 6 (23:30):
So I was like, what the fuck a torture seller.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I go back to my then colleague, Young Mays, and
I asked I tell him the story, And he goes
to a source high up in the justice department and
he says, right, we hear stories about some torture chambers.
And the guy replies, how the hell do you guys
(23:55):
know that? So a few days after that, the police
releases a video where you see how they raid the place.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
The video shows heavily armed police ram down the door
to a brick building as a helicopter hovers overhead. Inside,
they smash open door after door, they find a row
of shipping containers. Opening them, the police find that one
(24:31):
is lined with plastic, empty except for a single dentist's chair.
There are belts tied to the arms and handcuffs secured
to the foot rest.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
It looked like something out of a horror movie, like
Saw or something.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
It was totally crazy.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Feeling.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
In this video, released on the Dutch Police's YouTube channel,
head of the National Investigation Department explains that police found
seven containers. Six of those were holding cells. The seventh
the one with the dentist's chair was the torture chamber
Wouter had heard about.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
In containers off of a four hand if.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
The officer says, the Dutch police found tools including hammers, pliers,
scalpels and blow tortures.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The containers were soundproof, so when the police found the containers,
they put in an officer or an agent in the
container and they closed the container and they told them
to scream as loudly as possible, and from the outside
she couldn't hear it because it was very well isolated.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Police got there just in time. The chamber was ready,
but it hadn't been used.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
In the police investigation, they found out that the guy
who ordered to build or who paid for the building
of the containers was Becassa.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
So why did Roger p or Pete Costa build this
torture chamber. It goes back to his cocaine empire. The
dispute over money and the shooting of the man who
was like a son.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
One had started with the theft of one hundred million
euros worth of real estate and jewelry and stuff like
that ended with the police finding these seven torture chambers
in Brabant, which is in the south of Danellas, and
the Justice Department was always convinced that they were going
to be used. The only thing that happened was the
(26:34):
encro hack that got in between those plans, that jammed
those plans.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
In twenty twenty two, Roger P was sentenced to fifteen
years in prison for leading a cocaine smuggling operation. For
his role in building the torture chambers, he was given
an additional thirty three months.
Speaker 8 (27:04):
I live in the vost Pontage for a few years
and the biggest dreamer of all and and they had.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
This is Yoch Gottmers.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
He has long gray hair, piercing eyes, and he's a
friendly chap who was once a European boxing champion in
his youth. Yop was also one of the biggest drug
gangsters in the whole of the Netherlands these days, though
he's reformed handily. He also lives near to where Roger
P built his torture chamber, which is where we're driving to.
(27:42):
I want to see the chambers for myself to get
a better understanding of just how violent those people involved
in the cocaine business have become. I'd met Yop at
his home where something caught my eye, so.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
I noticed I saw the camera outside the house. So
is that you have to be vigilant all the time?
What's the big worry now.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
That they kill me still people that you were dealing
with back in the day. Or We continue to drive
through the countryside in the region of Brabon on the
Dutch Belgian border.
Speaker 8 (28:18):
I believe bra BoNT is one of the most criminal
place of all land. Only in bra Bant. We're twenty
liquidations in the drutt.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
World and over what time period twenty hits?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Gosh, So if you look by liquidation, your means a
hit or assassination. And looking outside the car window, it's
hard to imagine all those killings. It just seems so
peaceful and idyllic. The country roads are lined with fields
and pockets of forest, and past large farmhouses and barns.
(29:02):
At one point, Yo slows down.
Speaker 8 (29:06):
I lift this house, which won that one on the
corner with the flag out in the front, and this
I lift only on the first because on the ground
they're gonna get me with machine guns to kill me.
(29:27):
I live only upsided.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
As we drive, we see groups of cyclists and he
tells me we're in a popular tourist region.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
And here are the chambers, or just here.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The cameras.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, there's a camera on the wall every few meters,
isn't it?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
And what's this? This is a dilapidated house.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Soon we arrive in the village of wauser Plontage, which
is where the torture chambers were discovered. And suddenly Yop is.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Spooked the cameras.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
It's too dangerous.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
But you're worried. It's too dangerous to get out? Are
you worried about my safety?
Speaker 8 (30:19):
Also? Of course you are my guest. I don't know
where the owner is. What is more possible that he
knows me then that I knows him. Sure, I must
look out a little bit for my safety, okay, and
(30:42):
your shafety.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
The fact that you're a big, tough ex gangster is
unwilling to go any further, even after the Dutch police
raided this property in twenty twenty, suggests just how powerful
criminal organizations remain in this part of the Netherlands. But
as a journalist, I'm curious.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
I want to have a look.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So there's a series of warehouses just offer a very
quiet rural lane. There's a house opposite, but it's completely
run down and dilapidated and abandoned. The complex itself has
a high fence. I've moved a little bit closer. You
can see that there's three roofs to the building, so
(31:36):
it's a really large complex. Another group of cyclists have
just gone by.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
We've got this.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Lone walker down the country lane, and it just feels
like a very pleasant place. I think knowing what was
planned for that building really gives you a sense of
how roofless the drug smugglers are and the people involved
in these operations.
Speaker 6 (32:00):
The cocaine trade is a business with a mediation problem.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Back to Volter again, who broke the story about Roger
P's torture chamber.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I mean, these guys make a lot of money, so
it's easy for them to buy violence. In the old days,
if you would steal like a few kilograms of ecstasy,
you would get your head kicked in. But now the
amounts have gone bigger that the money has gone bigger,
so the violence has gone bigger as well. In my opinion,
as long as there's a product which is illegal and
(32:34):
which people want to use, and which people are willing
to pay money for, the cocaine trade will thrive.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
So in that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Way the future of the cocaine trade looks sweet. Is
it good for your health? Is it good for violent No? Obviously,
but if you ask me how will the cocaine trade
be in like five years, I will promise you it
will thrive.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
The war on drugs is it's bigger than ever.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Listening to Vouta, I realized that this investigation also has
to get bigger, which for me and David and Stephen
means we can't stop here.
Speaker 9 (33:23):
It's crazy evidence just a play, you know where one
day someone's windows done or you may gets arrested. There's
something difference every single day.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
That's next time on Cocaine Nick when we leave the
Netherlands and follow the cocaine trail to where it's sold
on the streets of the UK.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
So it's bobvious.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
I'm a Fuller Times newspaper and doing a podcast SNA
there was a shooting a last year.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times, The
Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will Row and
Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leek,
(34:22):
with original music by Tom Burchell. Additional support on this
episode from shaw De Freeze and If you want to
get in touch with any questions or thoughts on the series,
email Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
At the Times dot co dot uk.
Look money cops. The extra money's black money, going out,
spending money in e glips. You have enough money, you
can do what you want. Then you're for yourself a king.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This world, the underworld, has a different set of standards
and morals. Sometimes it can get a little bit dodgy.
I think that's the best way to describe it.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm in the Netherlands, where vout Allowman's one of the
top Dutch crime reporters, has been explaining in the last
episode how the cocaine business made his country a very
violent place for a time. In twenty twenty, his contacts
in the criminal underworld gave him a tip it would
lead him to break one of the darkest stories of
(00:52):
his career. It's about a man called Roger p better
known by his nickname Pete Costa.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
We don't know that much about him. He was a
regular kind of guy. He was born in nineteen seventy one.
He's a guy who grew up in Rotterdam, and he's
a flyer, a the arraider kind of guy, an average joe.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
But that was a facade.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
He went to call for a few robberies in the past,
and people in the criminal world say he was making
speed like amphetamines, but he wasn't like a big drug
figure until in the Naughtiest That's when his star kind
of grew.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Roger P eventually served jail time for armed robbery and
assault in two thousand and six, but he was released
a few years later and began to travel regularly to
Latin America.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
He settles in Costa Rica, where he's involved in pineapple trade,
and that's how he got his nickname pic Costa because
it was in Costa Rica, and that's where he started
sending large quantities of cocaine to the port of Rotterdam.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Soon, Rotterdam would become one of the main gateways through
which cocaine was smuggled into Europe and Roger P's operation
would expand into planned kidnappings, murder and torture. I'm Fiona
(02:34):
Hamilton and from The Times, The Sunday Times and News
Corp Australia. This is Cocaine Inc. Episode four, The Pineapple Trader. Okay,
so far in this series you've only heard from me
(02:55):
at the start and the end of each episode. But
it's time I properly introduced myself and tell you why
I care about this investigation. I've been a reporter for
more than twenty years, covering crime for more than half
that time. I was actually born in England, but brought
(03:15):
up in Australia, where I started out working on regional
newspapers in beautiful coastal areas near Brisbane in Queensland. I
made the move to the UK to try and get
a job on Fleet Street stay here for a few years.
Fifteen years later, I'm still at the Times. One of
the first big pieces I wrote for The Times was
about a cocaine dealer in London. He spoke so casually
(03:39):
about fighting over territory and his chances of getting what
he called wetted up which means knife in the process.
This young lad, Michael, he won strength of being a firefighter,
but now aged nineteen, he wanted to make enough money
to put him in the director's seat, as he called it,
you know, being the top dog run other kids dealing coke.
(04:02):
I've reported on so many Michaels since then. I've written
about record drug bus Government promises to crack down on
Class A drugs and community initiatives to offer more activities
and diversions for those involved in selling them, but it
all feels like a bit of a broken record. Privately,
(04:24):
some of the police chiefs I talk to say it's
like an arcade game. One dealer gets arrested, but another
pops up in their place, and it's a game that
we are badly losing. I don't know what Michael's doing
these days, if he's even alive. But of course there
are hundreds and thousands of Michaels across the world, all
(04:45):
of them looking to sell cocaine. So how do they
get it?
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Well?
Speaker 3 (04:50):
That brings us to the next part of the multinational
business model, distribution.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Tell me what you had for breakfast? I can get
your sound levels.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Oh, this morning I had to breakfast I take from
Yochot with Chrisley, so that's normally my breakfast.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Okay, lovely, this is Hare.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
We have a big problem in the port of Rotterdam
with cocaine.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
He's the leader of the hit and Run Cargo team
in Rotterdam, a specialist unit combining customs, police, public prosecutors
and intelligence. We can only use his first name to
protect his family's safety. Hair is no stranger to cocaine
bus it's.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Every year, about two hundred times, so I think I
have more than one thy to fifteen hundred times we
find the drugs in the last years, so for me
it's quite normal.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Last year, almost sixty tons of cocaine was seized across
the Netherlands, including a single massive eight tons seizure made
right here at the port in Rotterdam. Officials laid out
the hall in a warehouse with fat blocks of cocaine
stacked one on top of the other, wrapped in plastic sacks.
It looked like it would fill the laurry easily, a
(06:13):
truly industrial quantity.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
There are a lot of products who are produced in
South America, so fruit and vegetables is one of the
common ways to bring the drugs into containers. Only maybe
ten or twenty percent of all the cocaine it's coming
in to port of rotter Image destinated for the Netherlands,
and the rest of the cocaine is distributed somewhere to Europe,
(06:38):
for example, to Great Britain. The last few years we
see a lot of ripoff. A ripoff, it's meaning that
you have regular goods and somewhere in the logistical chain
they opened the container, they put in some bags with
drugs extra, they close the container, again, make a new
seal on it, send it to Rotterdam, and somebody in
(07:02):
Rotterdam must open the container and take out the drugs
before the regular cargo is going to its destination.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
To do that, the correct shipping container needs to be
located by the drug gang among the thousands of containers.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Moving through the port daily.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe. But imagine you're
part of the cocaine smuggling operation. It's your job to
find the shipping container with the drugs in it. Everywhere
you look there's towers of containers, So how do you
find that needle in a haystack?
Speaker 5 (07:45):
All the people are working somewhere in the port, so
they need somebody from inside for have information.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
So I've left the hotel in Rotterdam this morning. It's
a lovely sunny day. Very quickly the city landscape of
Rotterdam has given way to a massive industrial area, big
puffs of smoke going into the air from refineries and warehouses.
There's about eight lanes of traffic going in all sorts
(08:20):
of different directions, trucks zipping past me every couple of seconds.
Just getting more and more of a sense of how
quickly goods.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Are moved through this port.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
So I've just got out the car and I'm looking
across a quite large canal to one of the terminals.
But there's four or five of these terminals here, leading
all the way out to the North Sea. I'm looking
to my right and i can see one, two, three
of these absolutely gigantic ships filled with thousands of containers.
(09:07):
And I'm really really getting the sense of the scale
here of how much product is moved into this port
every single day. I mean, I've been covering stories on
drugs for many, many years and speaking about the sometimes
futile battle, and perhaps I get a new sense of
the futility of it looking at this place and how
(09:29):
enormous it is.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I mean, the best way to get cocaine into a
country is if you have corrupt guys at customs.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
This is about Allowman's again, the Dutch crime reporter who
was telling us about Roger p the cocaine dealer who
made a fortune importing the drug from Latin America. Every year,
fourteen million containers moved through the port. Unsurprisingly, the authorities
aren't able to search everyone for illegal drugs and other contraband.
(10:05):
In fact, they're only able to check about one percent.
So with the help of someone in the port, it's
not hard to see how guys like Roger P with
his pineapple containers can have their shipments missed or wave through.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
There's a department and it's called pre arrival, and that's
where they decide which container gets checked and which container
doesn't get checked. If you want to use some jargon,
that's like putting a container on green. People working there
for him they knew which containers were coming in and.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
They would put them on green.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And that was like a lottery that you can't lose
because then you can just send containers full of drugs
through customs because you know they're not going to be checked.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Back in twenty sixteen, authorities managed to intercept three point
seven tons of cocaine, which they trace back to Roger P,
also known by his nickname Pete Costa. In fact, Vouter
uses the name interchangeably. What really matters here, though, is
that three point seven tons of cocaine.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Is probably enough to fill a decent sized truck from
the floor to the ceiling.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
To smuggle an amount of cocaine that big, you have
to be very sure of yourself, because that's a lot
of money.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So are you able to introduce yourself for the purpose
of this podcast and.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Tell me who you are?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yes, of course, and we're not using your real name,
we're giving you the pseudonym case.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Are you able to say why that is.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
My own?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Chiefly I'm in a hotel room in Rotterdam. Case is
an ex harbor worker. He's hunched over. He seems a
little nervous because he wants helped smuggle cocaine through this
very port, now retired. Case was twenty six when he
first started his transport company back in the eighties.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Although they never worked together.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I'm hoping that case can help me understand how someone
like Roger p could build up such a profitable operation.
Were you were aware that the port of Rotterdam was
a point for which there was a lot of illicit
drug smuggling?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yes, but nothing both so I didn't care.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
How did you know? Hey, so it's really in plain
so it's obvious it.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Was in plain Sat at that time. It was a
plain Sat. Yes, can you give me everybody who was
working in the port knows it. You're here, that's coming in.
You see some companies growing like hell, this is impossible
that they were growing so quickly because you were in
the same business. So you know what the prophets I
and yeah, what you can spend.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Although he knew it was happening. For ten years or so,
Case ran his company legally. He earned good living and
enjoyed the work. But one day a friend came asking
for a favor.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
He had some problems with the import of an container,
and he asked me to help him be imported to
contain it for him. Later on they came to the
office and they put a bag of money here for
the success. And well then I knew it was a
rug transport, of course, and from that time on that
(13:50):
was EU money, big money, how much mm more than
enough to buy a house.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
And from that moment you.
Speaker 6 (13:59):
Were in, and from that moment I was in.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Once in Case's experience of moving goods legally through the
port made him increasingly useful to his criminal business partners.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You know how the customs are working. That was kind
of containers. They will check, they will not check, and
then tell them how to do it. And you were imported.
I had my own lawes transported to this wherever they wanted.
Nobody who was in the business from from Dorgs. She
it as something criminal, just a cargo, just something to
(14:38):
buy and sell.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Business was booming, and eventually cases associates in the Netherlands
told him there was somebody who wanted to meet him,
somebody in Latin America.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So you go over there, meet the real people over
there and making agreement. How much you get for it?
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Do you feel comfortable saying where exactly you traveled to
meet people Mexico Columbia. Did you feel intimidated or fear
them when.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
You met them?
Speaker 1 (15:15):
No? No, one business men, their own company is over there.
It's not like what you see on television.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Very much a business model in the same way that
other commerce works.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah. Correct, Correct.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Were you feeling any financial pressure too? Did you need
a little bit more money?
Speaker 1 (15:33):
No?
Speaker 4 (15:34):
No, not really, but once you realized how easy.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It was, It was so easy to import without any problems,
and then yeah, right not.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
For twenty five to thirty years, Case lived two lives,
one with his legitimate business and the other running his
illicit operation.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Look and money corrects. The extra money is black money
going out spending money in the eclipse. You have enough money,
you can do what you want. Then you're for yourself
a king.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
But even a king knows nothing last forever. In time,
the police caught up with him. Case was arrested and
served six years in jail. He says he actually felt
good about it because although he'd been making money, he'd
also been feeling unable to escape the cocaine business.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
It looks stupid. Bit at the moment the police get you,
you get all through your freedom back when you start.
There is only one end. It could take one year,
could take ten years, can take twenty years. Within the
end you lose.
Speaker 5 (16:53):
You see a corruption everywhere in the public partners and
the private partners, also by customs. That's not good. That's true.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
This is Hair again, who leads a specialist unit tackling
corruption in Rotterdam. But he's not just dealing with low
level corrupt workers like Case. There's also corruption within the
customs authority itself.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
I was on a department where one of the colleagues
was corrupt. It's about six seven years ago, and this
colleague give information to a criminal organization about the containers
we want to control and we want not to control.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
After an investigation, Hair's colleague was exposed and ended up
going down for between eight and ten years.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
I was angry because, together with your team, you try
to stop the drugs, and when there is one of
your colleagues who is corrupt, and then you are looking
also to the other colleagues, Hey, what's happening over here?
Are you trustworthy or are you also corrupt? So that's
also very difficult.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Speaking to her.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
You can see how much this bothers him, how the
cocaine trade even corrupts those in the top law enforcement
teams who he should be able to rely on now
vout Allowmans. The crime reporter says Roger p had a
lot of corrupt people on his payroll in his cocaine
smuggling operation.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
He was working with all these guys and some of
them were responsible for stashing the cocaine, Others were protecting
money stashes, others were selling the cocaine. To have an
operation like that, you have to be a clever manager
as well. You can't just fuck about. You have to
know what you're doing in the underworld. He wasn't known
(18:45):
as a very violent guy. I think it was smart
enough to understand that violence breeds attention, and the thing
you don't want is attention.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
But being smart isn't always enough in the drug business.
Like any chief exec, there's some things you can predict
and some things you can't, like workplace conflicts when two
colleagues suddenly fall out.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
In around two thousand and twenty, he gets in a
massive conflict with somebody who used to work with and
he says, this guy, I made him a millionaire. He
went to Dubai, he spent all this money, and then
he decided to steal money from me. That's what Roger
P says in intercepted messages. Roger P says, this guy
(19:34):
stole money that was about one hundred million worth of
real estate and other stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
So Roger P launches an investigation into this former colleague.
He tells his employees to deal with it, but this
is no ordinary hr disciplinary process.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
They kidnapped the guy.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
The guy is obviously very scared and he promises to
make everything right.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So Pete Coster's associates release him. And that's a mistake
because rather than making everything right, someone very close to
Roger P ends up dead.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
In May twenty twenty, a guy named Ibrahim Azaim his
nickname is Ebo, gets murdered in Rotendam. He gets shot
and he was like Roger PAS's son. From what I heard,
it was very close to Roger P. So now Pete
(20:34):
Costa is involved in a violent conflict revolving around one
hundred million euros worth of real estate that.
Speaker 6 (20:44):
Was stolen from him and somebody he loved very much
got shot.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So when Roger p finds out, he drives from Spain
where he lives, to the Netherlands and there he gets
into contact with a guy and they decide that they
are going to retaliate. In the summer of twenty twenty,
(21:20):
I was working for a national newspaper. I was writing
about organized crime together with a Colleguemannon Mayus. We heard
stories that encro had fallen.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Vouters talking about Anchor Chat, a company that made sophisticated
encrypted devices disguised though like ordinary phones, the user could
access a secret messaging system. Set up in twenty sixteen,
It soon became the way criminals communicated across countries and
between continents. They all basically thought it was impenetrable, but
(21:57):
then in early twenty twenty, French and authorities began to
hack the system. A gigantic cyber investigation led to eight
hundred arrests across Europe.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The encrypted communication in which criminals thought that they were
free to speak, was intercepted in a legal way by
the French authorities.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Nique A police in Korchet.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
So far, they've arrested seven hundred and forty six suspects,
seized more than fifty four million pounds in cash, two
tons of cocaine, seventy seven firearms, and fifty five luxury cars.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So everywhere is like, oh fuck, what if this guy
talked about me?
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Or what have I sent? So it wasn't like panic,
but it was unrest.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I was talking to this guy who was like a
high up somebody who knows what's what in the underworld.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Because it's during the pandemic, Vowder has to go and
meet his source outside. They end up in an industrial estate.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
So we were standing at a parking area at one
of those places where you can buy like tools and
equipment and wood and stuff like that, and we were
talking about what was going on, and somebody got arrested,
and we were talking about the arrest and very casually
the guy says, all right, so if they found this,
(23:24):
they know about the torture seller.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
And I'm like, torture seller, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
You know?
Speaker 6 (23:30):
So I was like, what the fuck a torture seller.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I go back to my then colleague, Young Mays, and
I asked I tell him the story, And he goes
to a source high up in the justice department and
he says, right, we hear stories about some torture chambers.
And the guy replies, how the hell do you guys
(23:55):
know that? So a few days after that, the police
releases a video where you see how they raid the place.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
The video shows heavily armed police ram down the door
to a brick building as a helicopter hovers overhead. Inside,
they smash open door after door, they find a row
of shipping containers. Opening them, the police find that one
(24:31):
is lined with plastic, empty except for a single dentist's chair.
There are belts tied to the arms and handcuffs secured
to the foot rest.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
It looked like something out of a horror movie, like
Saw or something.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
It was totally crazy.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Feeling.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
In this video, released on the Dutch Police's YouTube channel,
head of the National Investigation Department explains that police found
seven containers. Six of those were holding cells. The seventh
the one with the dentist's chair was the torture chamber
Wouter had heard about.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
In containers off of a four hand if.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
The officer says, the Dutch police found tools including hammers, pliers,
scalpels and blow tortures.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
The containers were soundproof, so when the police found the containers,
they put in an officer or an agent in the
container and they closed the container and they told them
to scream as loudly as possible, and from the outside
she couldn't hear it because it was very well isolated.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Police got there just in time. The chamber was ready,
but it hadn't been used.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
In the police investigation, they found out that the guy
who ordered to build or who paid for the building
of the containers was Becassa.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
So why did Roger p or Pete Costa build this
torture chamber. It goes back to his cocaine empire. The
dispute over money and the shooting of the man who
was like a son.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
One had started with the theft of one hundred million
euros worth of real estate and jewelry and stuff like
that ended with the police finding these seven torture chambers
in Brabant, which is in the south of Danellas, and
the Justice Department was always convinced that they were going
to be used. The only thing that happened was the
(26:34):
encro hack that got in between those plans, that jammed
those plans.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
In twenty twenty two, Roger P was sentenced to fifteen
years in prison for leading a cocaine smuggling operation. For
his role in building the torture chambers, he was given
an additional thirty three months.
Speaker 8 (27:04):
I live in the vost Pontage for a few years
and the biggest dreamer of all and and they had.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
This is Yoch Gottmers.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
He has long gray hair, piercing eyes, and he's a
friendly chap who was once a European boxing champion in
his youth. Yop was also one of the biggest drug
gangsters in the whole of the Netherlands these days, though
he's reformed handily. He also lives near to where Roger
P built his torture chamber, which is where we're driving to.
(27:42):
I want to see the chambers for myself to get
a better understanding of just how violent those people involved
in the cocaine business have become. I'd met Yop at
his home where something caught my eye, so.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
I noticed I saw the camera outside the house. So
is that you have to be vigilant all the time?
What's the big worry now.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
That they kill me still people that you were dealing
with back in the day. Or We continue to drive
through the countryside in the region of Brabon on the
Dutch Belgian border.
Speaker 8 (28:18):
I believe bra BoNT is one of the most criminal
place of all land. Only in bra Bant. We're twenty
liquidations in the drutt.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
World and over what time period twenty hits?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Gosh, So if you look by liquidation, your means a
hit or assassination. And looking outside the car window, it's
hard to imagine all those killings. It just seems so
peaceful and idyllic. The country roads are lined with fields
and pockets of forest, and past large farmhouses and barns.
(29:02):
At one point, Yo slows down.
Speaker 8 (29:06):
I lift this house, which won that one on the
corner with the flag out in the front, and this
I lift only on the first because on the ground
they're gonna get me with machine guns to kill me.
(29:27):
I live only upsided.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
As we drive, we see groups of cyclists and he
tells me we're in a popular tourist region.
Speaker 8 (29:39):
And here are the chambers, or just here.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The cameras.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, there's a camera on the wall every few meters,
isn't it?
Speaker 4 (29:56):
And what's this? This is a dilapidated house.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Soon we arrive in the village of wauser Plontage, which
is where the torture chambers were discovered. And suddenly Yop is.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Spooked the cameras.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
It's too dangerous.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
But you're worried. It's too dangerous to get out? Are
you worried about my safety?
Speaker 8 (30:19):
Also? Of course you are my guest. I don't know
where the owner is. What is more possible that he
knows me then that I knows him. Sure, I must
look out a little bit for my safety, okay, and
(30:42):
your shafety.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
The fact that you're a big, tough ex gangster is
unwilling to go any further, even after the Dutch police
raided this property in twenty twenty, suggests just how powerful
criminal organizations remain in this part of the Netherlands. But
as a journalist, I'm curious.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
I want to have a look.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So there's a series of warehouses just offer a very
quiet rural lane. There's a house opposite, but it's completely
run down and dilapidated and abandoned. The complex itself has
a high fence. I've moved a little bit closer. You
can see that there's three roofs to the building, so
(31:36):
it's a really large complex. Another group of cyclists have
just gone by.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
We've got this.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Lone walker down the country lane, and it just feels
like a very pleasant place. I think knowing what was
planned for that building really gives you a sense of
how roofless the drug smugglers are and the people involved
in these operations.
Speaker 6 (32:00):
The cocaine trade is a business with a mediation problem.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Back to Volter again, who broke the story about Roger
P's torture chamber.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I mean, these guys make a lot of money, so
it's easy for them to buy violence. In the old days,
if you would steal like a few kilograms of ecstasy,
you would get your head kicked in. But now the
amounts have gone bigger that the money has gone bigger,
so the violence has gone bigger as well. In my opinion,
as long as there's a product which is illegal and
(32:34):
which people want to use, and which people are willing
to pay money for, the cocaine trade will thrive.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
So in that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Way the future of the cocaine trade looks sweet. Is
it good for your health? Is it good for violent No? Obviously,
but if you ask me how will the cocaine trade
be in like five years, I will promise you it
will thrive.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
The war on drugs is it's bigger than ever.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Listening to Vouta, I realized that this investigation also has
to get bigger, which for me and David and Stephen
means we can't stop here.
Speaker 9 (33:23):
It's crazy evidence just a play, you know where one
day someone's windows done or you may gets arrested. There's
something difference every single day.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
That's next time on Cocaine Nick when we leave the
Netherlands and follow the cocaine trail to where it's sold
on the streets of the UK.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
So it's bobvious.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
I'm a Fuller Times newspaper and doing a podcast SNA
there was a shooting a last year.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times, The
Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced
by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will Row and
Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leek,
(34:22):
with original music by Tom Burchell. Additional support on this
episode from shaw De Freeze and If you want to
get in touch with any questions or thoughts on the series,
email Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 4 (34:35):
At the Times dot co dot uk.
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