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