It was last Thursday that the enormous drug seizure was made in the port of Norvik in Nynäshamn, south of Stockholm. Customs made the find in a container, then the police took over the case. According to Aftonbladet and SVT’s information, it is about 1.4 tons of narcotics.
– A rapid test has shown that it is cocaine. I can say that it involves a lot of drugs. But I can’t go into any amounts, because I don’t know that yet. Let the analyzes show that, says prosecutor Daniel Jonsson.
If the information turns out to be correct so this is one of the biggest drug seizures in Sweden of all time.
Ted Esplund of NOA, the National Police Operations Department, says that as soon as the NFC, National Forensic Center, comes in with a message regarding the scope, the purity level will be reviewed.
– If it is as I believe, that it comes directly from the producing country, then the purity is very high, he says.
That means the cocaineto put it in layman’s terms, can be diluted.
According to Ted Esplund, criminal actors who have close contact with the producer pay around SEK 300,000 per kilo for cocaine.
– During the Encro era, our criminals in the next level paid SEK 400,000-450,000 per kilo, he says and points out that if a gram of cocaine is sold for around SEK 1,000, the street value of the seized cocaine ends up being around one billion kroner.
How is the criminal environment then affected of this kind of giant strike? Ted Esplund makes the assessment that it will not lead to an escalation of violence.
– I absolutely do not draw such conclusions at this stage. We have not raised the level of preparedness, in addition to the high level of preparedness that we already have.
Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT
According to Ted Esplund, it is entirely possible that criminal actors are calculating with this type of setback.
– Those who would accept this may have succeeded eight times before. They may expect that every tenth transport smokes somewhere in some country in some customs filter. Or maybe you get cheated by a corrupt skipper. They probably make sure that the profit is high enough that they can take a hit from time to time, says Ted Esplund, who suspects that several criminal actors in several different countries would share the cargo in Nynäshamn.
– They do not need to have cooperated and had knowledge of each other. They are not at all sure that they have known that they invested in the same transport.
Lennart Karlsson, chairman in the narcotics police association, tells TT that the seizure’s effect on the Swedish market is negligible. According to him, the availability of cocaine is very good.
– There are enormous amounts of cocaine in circulation and it is generally not a major problem to replace a lot of that size. A record amount of cocaine is being produced right now and a record amount is being shipped to Europe.
Stefan Granath, deputy head of control at the Swedish Customs Service, says that the authority’s drug seizures have increased dramatically in terms of volume in recent years.
– First it was said that ten kilos was a good catch, then it became 100 kilos and nobody thought it would be exceeded. Now we are talking about ton, says Stefan Granath and points out that it is mainly cannabis, cocaine and amphetamines that are the subject of the really large seizures.
That the now current seizure was made in Nynäshamn may, according to him, be due to the fact that customs have successfully pinpointed Helsingborg’s port and made large seizures there.
– This business is extremely sensitive to economic conditions. They change mode at once and then they abandon Helsingborg as a destination. It becomes something of a cat and mouse game.
Five men are in custody on suspicion of extremely serious drug offenses after the crackdown in Nynäshamn, a sixth has been detained on suspicion of aiding and abetting an extremely serious drug offence. Two of the men are under 18, the other four are in their 20s. All six deny wrongdoing.
