The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction<\/a> adds, \u201cThe drugs are usually loaded in the dock area, so the \u2018rip-on\u2019 team must be able to get the drugs into the container terminal and to locate the container, which must be in an accessible position. In most cases the security seal needs to be replaced with a duplicate to avoid obvious signs of tampering.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the port of arrival, the drugs need to be retrieved, which can be achieved in a variety of ways. The drugs can be removed from the container by corrupt port workers or by external teams who gain access to the terminal. After the \u2018rip-off\u2019 is complete, the container is either left open or resealed with another false \/duplicate seal. The success of the rip-off depends on knowing the location of the container within what is often a very large container terminal with tens of thousands of containers. However, just knowing the container number is usually not enough. It must also be accessible, which again usually requires a corrupt port or company worker to manipulate the position of the container.\u201d<\/p>\n In Jack\u2019s case the smugglers cut the locking bars of the container so as to gain access to it and insert the drugs without disturbing the original seal. A spare MSC seal was found amongst the drugs by the Kenyan authorities.<\/p>\n When the Kenyan police arrested Jack they showed him a photograph that had been taken at passport control in Nairobi airport of three Caucasian men; they asked him if he knew them. He did not, but they were subsequently identified as suspected members of the \u2018Ndanghreta crime syndicate. They had arrived at Nairobi airport a few days before the four containers arrived in Mombasa. No one is sure, but the plan was probably for the smugglers to bribe their way into the port, recover the drugs, and rescue an operation that had gone wrong. Unfortunately for them\u2014and for Jack\u2014the Kenyan police got to the drugs before they did.<\/p>\n After Jack was arrested, the DEA wrote a letter to the Kenyan prosecutors<\/a> explaining what had happened, writing, \u201cThe DEA would like to stress that there was no indication the cocaine was to be received in Kenya.\u201d They added, \u201cThe company owning the consignment had no knowledge that the cocaine was secreted inside their shipment of sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Kenya authorities continually denied ever receiving such a letter, and the case against Jack and his co-defendant Roy Mwanthi, a Kenyan clearing agent at the port, dragged on. It was only in March 2019 that the case was finally dismissed.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want this to happen to anybody in our business ever again,\u201d Jack told me.<\/p>\n \u201cBut how can anyone stop it?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my case,\u201d he told me, \u201cthe vertical bar on the shipping container concerned had been cut through, so that the bar could be turned, and the container opened, without disturbing the seal. (See photo below.) The smugglers than put the drugs inside, closed the container and re-welded the bar, without breaking the seal.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it should be standard practice for containers to be double-sealed between the two doors,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe first seal would be a cable that goes between the two central bars, and act as a physical deterrent that needs to be banged off before the container can be opened. The second would be a multiple-layer security-sticker that goes across the two doors with a bar code readable by any standard smart phone. The sticker will allow anyone to check quickly and easily at any point whether that seal has been broken.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut how can we implement that change?\u201d I asked him. \u201cHow can we make that happen?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTraders can implement their own policies for sealing containers,\u201d he replied, \u201cbut there needs to be an industry standard. It shouldn\u2019t be something that individual importers need to ask for as an add-on, or as a special favour.\u201d<\/p>\n Listening to Jack, however, I wondered about the effectiveness of any sort of sealing method. Along with the drugs in the container, Kenyan Customs found a counterfeit seal that would have been used to reseal the container in Valencia once the drugs had been removed.<\/p>\n \u201cSurely the solution lies in the hands of the shipping and trading companies,\u201d I asked him. \u201cIt must come rather from the port authorities increasing security at the ports.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenge,\u201d Jack admitted, \u201cis that you are up against a large-scale well-funded organisation, especially from Brazil.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time as Jack was struggling with the courts in Kenya, Mr Ammaiappan Vasudevan, the 51-year-old partner of Amro Sugars\u2014a sugar importer in Sri Lanka\u2014spent ten months in a Colombo prison pending trial on charges of also smuggling cocaine from Brazil.<\/p>\n On 4th May 2016, 184 sugar containers belonging to Sucden were loaded onto MSC Julie in Santos, Brazil.<\/a> The Sri Lankan company Amro Sugars bought 54 of the containers while they were afloat, while other Sri Lankan importers bought the 130 remaining. The consignment went via Sines, Portugal where the containers were trans-shipped onto MSC Luciana for Sri Lanka. The cargo cleared customs in Colombo on 9th<\/sup> June, but the containers sat unopened for four days in a privately owned yard until they were inspected by the Sri Lankan Narcotics Raid Unit (NRU).<\/p>\n The NRU had received a tip-off giving them a precise container number. The country\u2019s President, along with attendant press, was present to witness the NRU opening the container. Inside, the NRU found 80 kg of cocaine, marked with a tiger stamp, in three black travel bags, along with duplicate seals.<\/p>\n Mr Vasudevan was present at the time the container was opened and he was arrested on the spot, along with the two wharf clerks who had cleared the sugar consignment through Customs. In addition, Amro Sugars\u2019 bank accounts were frozen, leaving the company barely able to operate.<\/p>\n Even though the NRU privately acknowledged that Mr Vasudevan had purchased the sugars afloat\u2014and therefore could not have known about the drugs\u2014he still languished in jail while the investigation continued. At the time it was the biggest ever drug seizure in Sri Lanka, and drug smuggling is an unbailable offence in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n One month after the seizure, Amro Sugars\u2019 employees found 274 kg of cocaine in a further two containers and immediately informed the NRU. Because they did so, no one was arrested and the company was ruled an unwitting recipient. However, there was no review of Mr Vasudevan\u2019s case, and Amro Sugars\u2019 bank accounts remained frozen.<\/p>\n This second, separately purchased, consignment had left Santos aboard MSC Letizia, the same ship that carried Jack Marrian\u2019s sugar. All the containers had been loaded on the same date. When the ship arrived in Valencia, the Amros sugar containers were trans-shipped onto MSC Maria Saveria for Colombo, and Jack\u2019s sugar was transhipped to Kenya.<\/p>\n By some estimates<\/a>, almost half a tonne of cocaine may have been aboard the MSC Letizia when it crossed the Atlantic in June 2016. The drugs were believed to have been destined to the Italian crime syndicate \u2018Ndanghreta, which controls up to 60 percent of the cocaine traffic between South America and Europe, and operates in ports all along the Iberian Peninsula, as well as in Italy. According to Nicola Gratteri and Antonio Nicaso, authors of the 2015 book on the crime group Oro Bianco (White Gold)<\/a>, the Rip on \/ Rip Off technique was developed in the Calabrian city of Gioia Tauro. More than 3.6 million containers pass through the port each year, making it tough to supervise each shipment.<\/p>\n The Italian police first worked out that containers were being broken into when they realised that certain container numbers did not match their seal numbers on arrival. \u2018Ndanghreta responded by producing counterfeited seals with matching numbers.<\/p>\n The UN Office of Drugs and Crime states that less than 2 percent of the more than 500 million containers<\/a> that are shipped yearly are inspected. Drug gangs often target sugar containers because sugar does not show up on scanning equipment. As such, the containers have to be searched by hand \u2013 a huge task. This makes the Rip On \/ Rip Off method relatively cheap. Even if a container is seized, there is only a relatively small quantity of cocaine in each container, reducing the cost to the gang.<\/p>\n I spoke to Sivarajah Jegathieswaran, Mr Vasudevan\u2019s nephew (and partner in Amro Sugars), by telephone from Colombo.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were unlucky,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe took only 54 of the 184 containers on that first shipment, but one of those 54 contained the drugs. The containers were allocated randomly between the three buyers, and we were unlucky to get the one with the drugs in them. The NRU told us that they knew that we were innocent and that we were not involved in the smuggling, but they still kept my uncle in jail. We don\u2019t understand why. Maybe it was political; maybe they were afraid to release him and then have the media criticise his release. They preferred to keep him in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n He told me that they even refused to release his uncle when a few months later three further containers arrived in Colombo with cocaine in them destined for another importer. The importers again informed the NRU, and no action was taken against them.<\/p>\n I asked Sivarajah what needed to be done to stop this happening again. \u201cIt has already been done,\u201d he replied. \u201cWe have stopped importing sugar\u2014and indeed other commodities\u2014from Brazil and South America. It is not worth the risk. In any case we make so little money out of the imports. It is not just our company. None of the importing companies in Sri Lanka will now buy Brazilian sugar. We have all stopped importing. Sri Lanka now buys their sugar from Europe, Ukraine and India.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my uncle went to prison we asked the Brazilian embassy for help, but they said they could do nothing. Now that everyone in Sri Lanka has stopped buying Brazilian sugar the Embassy has come back to us. But they are not protecting us. There is nothing they can do.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Sivarajah if he was still bitter about the experience.<\/p>\n \u201cMy uncle left the company after his release from prison,\u201d he told me. \u201cHe left it to my father and me. He had had enough.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the containers from the MSC Letizia ended up in Myanmar,\u201d he continued, \u201cbut no action was taken there against the importers. So why did the authorities in Kenya and Sri Lanka act the way they did?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/commodityconversations.com\/wordpress2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/container.jpg?resize=525%2C700&ssl=1\")
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