The Pineapple Trader | 4

Look money cops. The extra money's black money, going out, spending money in e glips. You have enough money, you can do what you want. Then you're for yourself a king.

This world, the underworld, has a different set of standards and morals. Sometimes it can get a little bit dodgy. I think that's the best way to describe it.

I'm in the Netherlands, where vout Allowman's one of the top Dutch crime reporters, has been explaining in the last episode how the cocaine business made his country a very violent place for a time. In twenty twenty, his contacts in the criminal underworld gave him a tip it would lead him to break one of the darkest stories of his career. It's about a man called Roger p better known by his nickname Pete Costa.

We don't know that much about him. He was a regular kind of guy. He was born in nineteen seventy one. He's a guy who grew up in Rotterdam, and he's a flyer, a the arraider kind of guy, an average joe.

But that was a facade.

He went to call for a few robberies in the past, and people in the criminal world say he was making speed like amphetamines, but he wasn't like a big drug figure until in the Naughtiest That's when his star kind of grew.

Roger P eventually served jail time for armed robbery and assault in two thousand and six, but he was released a few years later and began to travel regularly to Latin America.

He settles in Costa Rica, where he's involved in pineapple trade, and that's how he got his nickname pic Costa because it was in Costa Rica, and that's where he started sending large quantities of cocaine to the port of Rotterdam.

Soon, Rotterdam would become one of the main gateways through which cocaine was smuggled into Europe and Roger P's operation would expand into planned kidnappings, murder and torture. I'm Fiona Hamilton and from The Times, The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. This is Cocaine Inc. Episode four, The Pineapple Trader. Okay, so far in this series you've only heard from me at the start and the end of each episode. But it's time I properly introduced myself and tell you why

Well?

That brings us to the next part of the multinational business model, distribution.

Tell me what you had for breakfast? I can get your sound levels.

Oh, this morning I had to breakfast I take from Yochot with Chrisley, so that's normally my breakfast.

Okay, lovely, this is Hare.

We have a big problem in the port of Rotterdam with cocaine.

He's the leader of the hit and Run Cargo team in Rotterdam, a specialist unit combining customs, police, public prosecutors and intelligence. We can only use his first name to protect his family's safety. Hair is no stranger to cocaine bus it's.

Every year, about two hundred times, so I think I have more than one thy to fifteen hundred times we find the drugs in the last years, so for me it's quite normal.

Yeah.

Last year, almost sixty tons of cocaine was seized across the Netherlands, including a single massive eight tons seizure made right here at the port in Rotterdam. Officials laid out the hall in a warehouse with fat blocks of cocaine stacked one on top of the other, wrapped in plastic sacks. It looked like it would fill the laurry easily, a truly industrial quantity.

There are a lot of products who are produced in South America, so fruit and vegetables is one of the common ways to bring the drugs into containers. Only maybe ten or twenty percent of all the cocaine it's coming in to port of rotter Image destinated for the Netherlands, and the rest of the cocaine is distributed somewhere to Europe, for example, to Great Britain. The last few years we

To do that, the correct shipping container needs to be located by the drug gang among the thousands of containers.

Moving through the port daily.

Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe. But imagine you're part of the cocaine smuggling operation. It's your job to find the shipping container with the drugs in it. Everywhere you look there's towers of containers, So how do you find that needle in a haystack?

All the people are working somewhere in the port, so they need somebody from inside for have information.

So I've left the hotel in Rotterdam this morning. It's a lovely sunny day. Very quickly the city landscape of Rotterdam has given way to a massive industrial area, big puffs of smoke going into the air from refineries and warehouses. There's about eight lanes of traffic going in all sorts of different directions, trucks zipping past me every couple of seconds. Just getting more and more of a sense of how quickly goods.

Are moved through this port.

So I've just got out the car and I'm looking across a quite large canal to one of the terminals. But there's four or five of these terminals here, leading all the way out to the North Sea. I'm looking to my right and i can see one, two, three of these absolutely gigantic ships filled with thousands of containers. And I'm really really getting the sense of the scale here of how much product is moved into this port

I mean, the best way to get cocaine into a country is if you have corrupt guys at customs.

This is about Allowman's again, the Dutch crime reporter who was telling us about Roger p the cocaine dealer who made a fortune importing the drug from Latin America. Every year, fourteen million containers moved through the port. Unsurprisingly, the authorities aren't able to search everyone for illegal drugs and other contraband. In fact, they're only able to check about one percent.

There's a department and it's called pre arrival, and that's where they decide which container gets checked and which container doesn't get checked. If you want to use some jargon, that's like putting a container on green. People working there for him they knew which containers were coming in and.

They would put them on green.

And that was like a lottery that you can't lose because then you can just send containers full of drugs through customs because you know they're not going to be checked.

Back in twenty sixteen, authorities managed to intercept three point seven tons of cocaine, which they trace back to Roger P, also known by his nickname Pete Costa. In fact, Vouter uses the name interchangeably. What really matters here, though, is that three point seven tons of cocaine.

Is probably enough to fill a decent sized truck from the floor to the ceiling.

To smuggle an amount of cocaine that big, you have to be very sure of yourself, because that's a lot of money.

So are you able to introduce yourself for the purpose of this podcast and.

Tell me who you are?

Yes, of course, and we're not using your real name, we're giving you the pseudonym case.

Are you able to say why that is.

My own?

Chiefly I'm in a hotel room in Rotterdam. Case is an ex harbor worker. He's hunched over. He seems a little nervous because he wants helped smuggle cocaine through this very port, now retired. Case was twenty six when he first started his transport company back in the eighties.

Although they never worked together.

I'm hoping that case can help me understand how someone like Roger p could build up such a profitable operation. Were you were aware that the port of Rotterdam was a point for which there was a lot of illicit drug smuggling?

Yes, but nothing both so I didn't care.

How did you know? Hey, so it's really in plain so it's obvious it.

Was in plain Sat at that time. It was a plain Sat. Yes, can you give me everybody who was working in the port knows it. You're here, that's coming in. You see some companies growing like hell, this is impossible that they were growing so quickly because you were in the same business. So you know what the prophets I and yeah, what you can spend.

Although he knew it was happening. For ten years or so, Case ran his company legally. He earned good living and enjoyed the work. But one day a friend came asking for a favor.

He had some problems with the import of an container, and he asked me to help him be imported to contain it for him. Later on they came to the office and they put a bag of money here for the success. And well then I knew it was a rug transport, of course, and from that time on that was EU money, big money, how much mm more than enough to buy a house.

And from that moment you.

Were in, and from that moment I was in.

Once in Case's experience of moving goods legally through the port made him increasingly useful to his criminal business partners.

You know how the customs are working. That was kind of containers. They will check, they will not check, and then tell them how to do it. And you were imported. I had my own lawes transported to this wherever they wanted. Nobody who was in the business from from Dorgs. She it as something criminal, just a cargo, just something to buy and sell.

Business was booming, and eventually cases associates in the Netherlands told him there was somebody who wanted to meet him, somebody in Latin America.

So you go over there, meet the real people over there and making agreement. How much you get for it?

Yeah.

Do you feel comfortable saying where exactly you traveled to meet people Mexico Columbia. Did you feel intimidated or fear them when.

You met them?

No? No, one business men, their own company is over there. It's not like what you see on television.

Very much a business model in the same way that other commerce works.

Yeah. Correct, Correct.

Were you feeling any financial pressure too? Did you need a little bit more money?

No?

No, not really, but once you realized how easy.

It was, It was so easy to import without any problems, and then yeah, right not.

For twenty five to thirty years, Case lived two lives, one with his legitimate business and the other running his illicit operation.

Look and money corrects. The extra money is black money going out spending money in the eclipse. You have enough money, you can do what you want. Then you're for yourself a king.

But even a king knows nothing last forever. In time, the police caught up with him. Case was arrested and served six years in jail. He says he actually felt good about it because although he'd been making money, he'd also been feeling unable to escape the cocaine business.

It looks stupid. Bit at the moment the police get you, you get all through your freedom back when you start. There is only one end. It could take one year, could take ten years, can take twenty years. Within the end you lose.

You see a corruption everywhere in the public partners and the private partners, also by customs. That's not good. That's true.

This is Hair again, who leads a specialist unit tackling corruption in Rotterdam. But he's not just dealing with low level corrupt workers like Case. There's also corruption within the customs authority itself.

I was on a department where one of the colleagues was corrupt. It's about six seven years ago, and this colleague give information to a criminal organization about the containers we want to control and we want not to control.

After an investigation, Hair's colleague was exposed and ended up going down for between eight and ten years.

I was angry because, together with your team, you try to stop the drugs, and when there is one of your colleagues who is corrupt, and then you are looking also to the other colleagues, Hey, what's happening over here? Are you trustworthy or are you also corrupt? So that's also very difficult.

Speaking to her.

You can see how much this bothers him, how the cocaine trade even corrupts those in the top law enforcement teams who he should be able to rely on now vout Allowmans. The crime reporter says Roger p had a lot of corrupt people on his payroll in his cocaine smuggling operation.

He was working with all these guys and some of them were responsible for stashing the cocaine, Others were protecting money stashes, others were selling the cocaine. To have an operation like that, you have to be a clever manager as well. You can't just fuck about. You have to know what you're doing in the underworld. He wasn't known as a very violent guy. I think it was smart enough to understand that violence breeds attention, and the thing you don't want is attention.

But being smart isn't always enough in the drug business. Like any chief exec, there's some things you can predict and some things you can't, like workplace conflicts when two colleagues suddenly fall out.

In around two thousand and twenty, he gets in a massive conflict with somebody who used to work with and he says, this guy, I made him a millionaire. He went to Dubai, he spent all this money, and then he decided to steal money from me. That's what Roger P says in intercepted messages. Roger P says, this guy stole money that was about one hundred million worth of real estate and other stuff.

So Roger P launches an investigation into this former colleague. He tells his employees to deal with it, but this is no ordinary hr disciplinary process.

They kidnapped the guy.

The guy is obviously very scared and he promises to make everything right.

So Pete Coster's associates release him. And that's a mistake because rather than making everything right, someone very close to Roger P ends up dead.

In May twenty twenty, a guy named Ibrahim Azaim his nickname is Ebo, gets murdered in Rotendam. He gets shot and he was like Roger PAS's son. From what I heard, it was very close to Roger P. So now Pete Costa is involved in a violent conflict revolving around one hundred million euros worth of real estate that.

Was stolen from him and somebody he loved very much got shot.

So when Roger p finds out, he drives from Spain where he lives, to the Netherlands and there he gets into contact with a guy and they decide that they are going to retaliate. In the summer of twenty twenty, I was working for a national newspaper. I was writing about organized crime together with a Colleguemannon Mayus. We heard stories that encro had fallen.

Vouters talking about Anchor Chat, a company that made sophisticated encrypted devices disguised though like ordinary phones, the user could access a secret messaging system. Set up in twenty sixteen, It soon became the way criminals communicated across countries and between continents. They all basically thought it was impenetrable, but then in early twenty twenty, French and authorities began to hack the system. A gigantic cyber investigation led to eight hundred arrests across Europe.

The encrypted communication in which criminals thought that they were free to speak, was intercepted in a legal way by the French authorities.

Nique A police in Korchet.

So far, they've arrested seven hundred and forty six suspects, seized more than fifty four million pounds in cash, two tons of cocaine, seventy seven firearms, and fifty five luxury cars.

So everywhere is like, oh fuck, what if this guy talked about me?

Or what have I sent? So it wasn't like panic, but it was unrest.

I was talking to this guy who was like a high up somebody who knows what's what in the underworld.

Because it's during the pandemic, Vowder has to go and meet his source outside. They end up in an industrial estate.

So we were standing at a parking area at one of those places where you can buy like tools and equipment and wood and stuff like that, and we were talking about what was going on, and somebody got arrested, and we were talking about the arrest and very casually the guy says, all right, so if they found this, they know about the torture seller.

And I'm like, torture seller, what are you talking about?

You know?

So I was like, what the fuck a torture seller.

I go back to my then colleague, Young Mays, and I asked I tell him the story, And he goes to a source high up in the justice department and he says, right, we hear stories about some torture chambers. And the guy replies, how the hell do you guys know that? So a few days after that, the police releases a video where you see how they raid the place.

The video shows heavily armed police ram down the door to a brick building as a helicopter hovers overhead. Inside, they smash open door after door, they find a row of shipping containers. Opening them, the police find that one is lined with plastic, empty except for a single dentist's chair. There are belts tied to the arms and handcuffs secured to the foot rest.

It looked like something out of a horror movie, like Saw or something.

It was totally crazy.

Feeling.

In this video, released on the Dutch Police's YouTube channel, head of the National Investigation Department explains that police found seven containers. Six of those were holding cells. The seventh the one with the dentist's chair was the torture chamber Wouter had heard about.

In containers off of a four hand if.

The officer says, the Dutch police found tools including hammers, pliers, scalpels and blow tortures.

The containers were soundproof, so when the police found the containers, they put in an officer or an agent in the container and they closed the container and they told them to scream as loudly as possible, and from the outside she couldn't hear it because it was very well isolated.

Police got there just in time. The chamber was ready, but it hadn't been used.

In the police investigation, they found out that the guy who ordered to build or who paid for the building of the containers was Becassa.

So why did Roger p or Pete Costa build this torture chamber. It goes back to his cocaine empire. The dispute over money and the shooting of the man who was like a son.

One had started with the theft of one hundred million euros worth of real estate and jewelry and stuff like that ended with the police finding these seven torture chambers in Brabant, which is in the south of Danellas, and the Justice Department was always convinced that they were going to be used. The only thing that happened was the encro hack that got in between those plans, that jammed those plans.

In twenty twenty two, Roger P was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for leading a cocaine smuggling operation. For his role in building the torture chambers, he was given an additional thirty three months.

I live in the vost Pontage for a few years and the biggest dreamer of all and and they had.

This is Yoch Gottmers.

He has long gray hair, piercing eyes, and he's a friendly chap who was once a European boxing champion in his youth. Yop was also one of the biggest drug gangsters in the whole of the Netherlands these days, though he's reformed handily. He also lives near to where Roger P built his torture chamber, which is where we're driving to. I want to see the chambers for myself to get a better understanding of just how violent those people involved

I noticed I saw the camera outside the house. So is that you have to be vigilant all the time? What's the big worry now.

That they kill me still people that you were dealing with back in the day. Or We continue to drive through the countryside in the region of Brabon on the Dutch Belgian border.

I believe bra BoNT is one of the most criminal place of all land. Only in bra Bant. We're twenty liquidations in the drutt.

World and over what time period twenty hits?

Gosh, So if you look by liquidation, your means a hit or assassination. And looking outside the car window, it's hard to imagine all those killings. It just seems so peaceful and idyllic. The country roads are lined with fields and pockets of forest, and past large farmhouses and barns. At one point, Yo slows down.

I lift this house, which won that one on the corner with the flag out in the front, and this I lift only on the first because on the ground they're gonna get me with machine guns to kill me. I live only upsided.

As we drive, we see groups of cyclists and he tells me we're in a popular tourist region.

And here are the chambers, or just here.

The cameras.

Yeah, there's a camera on the wall every few meters, isn't it?

And what's this? This is a dilapidated house.

Soon we arrive in the village of wauser Plontage, which is where the torture chambers were discovered. And suddenly Yop is.

Spooked the cameras.

It's too dangerous.

But you're worried. It's too dangerous to get out? Are you worried about my safety?

Also? Of course you are my guest. I don't know where the owner is. What is more possible that he knows me then that I knows him. Sure, I must look out a little bit for my safety, okay, and your shafety.

Thank you very much.

The fact that you're a big, tough ex gangster is unwilling to go any further, even after the Dutch police raided this property in twenty twenty, suggests just how powerful criminal organizations remain in this part of the Netherlands. But as a journalist, I'm curious.

I want to have a look.

So there's a series of warehouses just offer a very quiet rural lane. There's a house opposite, but it's completely run down and dilapidated and abandoned. The complex itself has a high fence. I've moved a little bit closer. You can see that there's three roofs to the building, so it's a really large complex. Another group of cyclists have just gone by.

We've got this.

Lone walker down the country lane, and it just feels like a very pleasant place. I think knowing what was planned for that building really gives you a sense of how roofless the drug smugglers are and the people involved in these operations.

The cocaine trade is a business with a mediation problem.

Back to Volter again, who broke the story about Roger P's torture chamber.

I mean, these guys make a lot of money, so it's easy for them to buy violence. In the old days, if you would steal like a few kilograms of ecstasy, you would get your head kicked in. But now the amounts have gone bigger that the money has gone bigger, so the violence has gone bigger as well. In my opinion, as long as there's a product which is illegal and which people want to use, and which people are willing to pay money for, the cocaine trade will thrive.

So in that.

Way the future of the cocaine trade looks sweet. Is it good for your health? Is it good for violent No? Obviously, but if you ask me how will the cocaine trade be in like five years, I will promise you it will thrive.

The war on drugs is it's bigger than ever.

Listening to Vouta, I realized that this investigation also has to get bigger, which for me and David and Stephen means we can't stop here.

It's crazy evidence just a play, you know where one day someone's windows done or you may gets arrested. There's something difference every single day.

That's next time on Cocaine Nick when we leave the Netherlands and follow the cocaine trail to where it's sold on the streets of the UK.

So it's bobvious.

I'm a Fuller Times newspaper and doing a podcast SNA there was a shooting a last year.

Cocaine Inc. Is a joint investigation from the Times, The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins, Stephen Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. The series is produced by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will Row and Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leek, with original music by Tom Burchell. Additional support on this episode from shaw De Freeze and If you want to get in touch with any questions or thoughts on the series, email Cocaine Inc.

At the Times dot co dot uk.