The Swiss metropolis of Basel and its ports on the Rhine River are one of many entry factors for the huge portions of cocaine that arrive by the primary seaports of Northern Europe. SWI swissinfo.ch sees a customs management crew in motion.
There are not any boats in sight on the Rhine. Rippled by a biting wind, the river at the moment belongs to seagulls. At midday, a single cargo ship landed on the port of Kleinhüningen in Basel, on the border with France and Germany. The ship had left Rotterdam, going upstream with its load of 59 containers.
Kleinhüningen – along with Birsfelden and Muttenz – is without doubt one of the three ports on the Rhine in Swiss territory. They’re the nationwide transport hub within the freight hall between Rotterdam and Basel, in addition to the primary hubs for transhipment of products from water to highway or rail. In 2023, virtually 5,000 ships carrying round 120,000 containersExterior hyperlink docked in these ports.
Geared up with helmets and reflective vests, we visited the port with an implementation crew from the Federal Bureau of Customs and Border Safety. Our information is Ioannis, head of the Basel customs management crew, to whom we will refer solely by his first identify.
“Many of the containers have already been unloaded from the cargo ship and deposited on the marina,” explains Ioannis. As we walked in direction of the terminal, two of his colleagues entered the transshipment space, informing the port managers of their intention to examine three containers: two from China and one from Taiwan.
Needle in a haystack
The job of customs and border safety officers is fairly like on the lookout for a needle in a haystack. There isn’t a method to have the ability to examine all of the containers that go by the ports of Basel, which can deal with between 5 and 6 million tons of products in 2023.
“Solely a small a part of the imports can actually be checked,” admits Ioannis. “Inspections are carried out in a focused method based mostly on the data we now have.”
Learn the complete report
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/switzerland-an-unsuspected-hub-for-international-cocaine-trafficking/73719547
