In Martinique, on Monday, August 19, the frigate Sucker The warship of the Armed Forces of the Antilles (FAA) is not returning alone: next to it, a fishing boat of about twenty metres, with faded white paint, flies the Brazilian flag. The enormous trophy that was its cargo is on display on the quayside of Fort Saint-Louis, distributed in some 300 bales, arranged on thirty pallets: 10.5 tons of cocaine.
This is, rounded to the nearest half tonne, the total quantity seized by France in all of the Antilles during the whole of 2023. In 2022, cocaine seizures made in these territories amounted to almost 1.2 tonnes and seizures in French commercial ports originating from the Antilles had reached 6.7 tonnes in the same period.
The nine passengers on the boat – six Brazilians, two Venezuelans and one Colombian – were handed over to police from the Anti-Narcotics Office (Ofast), who will continue the investigation. A few days earlier, it was they who provided the information that triggered the interception mission, 1,200 kilometres off the coast of Martinique. To achieve this, their information had to circulate between several services and different countries. “It is a lot of work to cross-reference and exploit information that ends up bearing fruit.says Fort-de-France prosecutor Clarisse Taron. It is not only France that is affected by cocaine imports, all the ports in Western Europe are affected, which is why many countries work with us in this area of the Antilles. »
A common container of information
In his report on “state of threat”revealed by The world In February 2024, Ofast highlighted that the Caribbean islands located closer to the producing countries of South America and located on historic global maritime transport routes constituted one of the main transit areas for cocaine. The office specified that “the ports of Fort-de-France in Martinique and the complex [logistique et industriel] Jarry’s in Guadalupe represent privileged places for recovery.”
To initiate this cooperation, Ofast shared its information with the Maritime Intelligence Analysis Operational Centre for Narcotics, or MAOC-N. Created in 2007 and funded by the European Commission, it centralises and shares intelligence produced by its members: France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and, from 2024, Germany and Belgium. In Lisbon, its headquarters brings together liaison officers from different countries, police and military personnel, in order to facilitate exchanges between countries with different legislative frameworks and intelligence methods.
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