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<\/p>\nA tiny French neighbourhood a short hop across the English Channel is one of the major hubs for the cocaine trade in the UK.<\/p>\n
Les Neiges, a dockers\u2019 neighbourhood in the major French port city of Le Havre, was the hiding place of more than one-third of the cocaine found by police in the country in 2022. A record 27 tonnes of the drug was seized in France in total over the course of the year.<\/p>\n
The Normandy port is not alone, of course, forming just one node in an intercontinental network that helps move cocaine around the globe. Europe\u2019s relationship with the drug, however, has only been getting stronger, with a greater amount of it found by EU cops year on year since 2017.<\/p>\n
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Data for the total quantity of cocaine seized in the continent is only available as a full year up to 2021, but a record 303 tonnes of cocaine was seized by EU Member States that year. In Le Havre, the prevalence of drugs is nothing new.<\/p>\n
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In January 2023, six men went on trial in Douai following an investigation beginning in 2017, when authorities were tipped off that drugs from South America were coming through the port. The city's sprawling docks, marked by rows of shipping containers and towering cranes, is now the newest major conduit for the movement of drugs from South America to the EU and UK.<\/p>\n
Dockers who work at the coastal town \u2013 just across the Channel from Sussex \u2013 are vital to the operation of the smuggling network, and while many will get paid, as per France24, many are pressured into helping the gangs.<\/p>\n
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"The traffickers come up to them at the school gates or in a cafe and show them photos of their family," said lawyer Valerie Giard, who has represented a number of busted dockers. "They tell them that if they don't do what they say, there'll be trouble. Once they get them involved, they never get out."<\/p>\n
In 2018, a docker who had been kidnapped was found with his face battered and his calves full of screwdriver stab wounds. Since 2017, two dozen La Havre dockers have been abducted. Sometimes, the mafia run-ins can be fatal.<\/p>\n
On June 12, 2020 the body of docker Allan Affagard was found in a suburb of the city behind a school after his wife told authorities he had been abducted the night before. Security is now tight, with customs officers guarded by armed colleagues as they check containers.<\/p>\n
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Gunfights have broken out in the past, with cops last year opening fire on a group of men unloading cellophane-wrapped bricks. In another incident, heavily-armed criminals raided a warehouse in a bid to reclaim their lost stash.<\/p>\n
The scenes in La Havre sound like something out of The Wire, a connection many news outlets have made in the past, but this drama is playing out just a short ferry ride across the sea.<\/p>\n
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