Irrefutable proof: Malta a European drug trade centre

Irrefutable proof: Malta a European drug trade centre

By David Lindsay

While the Maltese security service were busy listening to private conversations of John Citizen and Security Service Chief George Grech was facing serious allegations of sexual abuse by a former acquaintance, German and Italian vice squads were tracking Hamburg’s biggest ever drug find down to Malta.

Revelations in the German media lend evidence to the fact that Malta is serving as a redistribution centre for drugs from South America. It also proves that Malta police have been missing the wood for the trees.

While the Malta police have been blowing their bugles over catching youths with cannabis or a few ecstasy pills and believing that Malta’s drug barons are behind bars at Kordin, cocaine worth 46 million marks destined for the Italian market was being discovered in a container destined for the Malta Freeport.

The find included 514 kilogrammes of 90% pure cocaine and 25,000 ecstasy pills – representing a local market value of over Lm 20 million.

The plan, according to German investigators, was to use speedboats from Malta to ship the drugs to the Italian mainland. Such speedboats would have most likely been manned by Maltese individuals, considering the experience some Maltese have been shown to have in crossing the Sicilian straits under cover of night and at high speeds.

The federal criminal investigators in Germany were somehow tipped off that cocaine from Venezuela was being transhipped to Malta via Hamburg. There were 2,500 containers on the container ship Nedlloyd Kingston, which left the Venezuelan port of La Guaira on 17 December and arrived in Hamburg on 10 January. It later arrived in Malta on the 27 January.

The search carried out by the German and Italian police discovered 64 packages of the drug buried beneath 1,152 packs of work gloves at the rear of the container. The packages were hidden behind carbon paper, a practice that aims to render x-ray machines useless.

In a sting operation, investigators had removed the drugs and allowed the container to depart for Malta in order to apprehend those related to the case. It appears that this was done without informing the Maltese authorities. If this is the case, it confirms a degree of mistrust in the Maltese police and security services.

Later in September, up to 13 individuals were arrested in Naples in connection to the shipment. The operation is still being kept under wraps and it is not known whether the Maltese authorities will be approaching their Italian and German counterparts for further information.