Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Look, money corrupts. The extra money is black money. You're going out, spending money in clubs. You have enough money, you can do what you want. You view 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 Wouter Louwmans, 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 2020, 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 Koster.
We don't know that much about him. He was a regular kind of guy. He was born in 1971. He's a guy who grew up in Rotterdam. And he's a fly under the radar kind of guy, an average Joe. But that was a facade. He went to court 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 noughties. That's when his style kind of grew. Roger P. eventually served jail time for armed robbery and assault in 2006, 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, Pete Costa.
because he 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 4, The Pineapple Trader. OK, 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 introduce myself and tell you why I care about this investigation.
I've been a reporter for more than 20 years, covering crime for more than half that time. I was actually born in England but brought up in Australia, where I started out working on regional newspapers in beautiful coastal areas near Brisbane in Queensland. I made the move to the UK to try and get a job on Fleet Street, stay here for a few years. 15 years later, I'm still at The Times.
One of the first big pieces I wrote for The Times was about a cocaine dealer in London. He spoke so casually about fighting over territory and his chances of getting what he called "wetted up", which means knifed, in the process. This young lad, Michael, he once dreamt of being a firefighter, but now, aged 19, he wanted to make enough money to put him in the director's seat, as he called it. You know, being the top dog, running other kids' dealing coke.
I've reported on so many Michaels since then. I've written about record drug busts, government promises to crack down on Class A drugs, and community initiatives to offer more activities and diversions for those involved in selling them. But it all feels like a bit of a broken record.
Privately, some of the police chiefs I talk to say it's like an arcade game. One dealer gets arrested, but another pops up in their place. And it's a game that we are badly losing. I don't know what Michael's doing these days, if he's even alive. But of course, there are hundreds and thousands of Michaels across the world, all of them looking to sell cocaine. So how do they get it? Well, that brings us to the next part of the multinational business model.
Distribution. Can you just tell me what you had for breakfast so I can get your sound levels? Oh, this morning I had breakfast. I take some yoghurt with Chrisley. So that's normally my breakfast. Okay, lovely. This is Herr. 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. Hare is no stranger to cocaine busts. It's every year about 200 times. So I think I have more than 1,000 to 1,500 times we find the drugs in the last years. So for me it's quite normal, yeah.
Last year, almost 60 tonnes of cocaine was seized across the Netherlands, including a single, massive eight-tonne seizure made right here at the port in Rotterdam. Officials laid out the haul 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 a lorry 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 10 or 20% of all the cocaine that's coming in to the port of Rotterdam is destined for the Netherlands. And the rest of the cocaine is distributed somewhere to Europe. For example, to Great Britain.
The last few years we see a lot of rip-off. A rip-off is meaning that you have regular goods and somewhere in the logistical chain they open the container, they put in some bags with drugs extra, they close the container again, make a new seal on it, send it to Rotterdam and somebody in Rotterdam must open the container and take out the drugs before the regular cargo is going to his destination.
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 who 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 every single day. I mean, I've been covering stories on drugs for many, many years and speaking about how
the sometimes futile battle and perhaps I get a new sense of the futility of it, looking at this place and how enormous it is. I mean, the best way to get cocaine into a country is if you have corrupt guys at customs. This is Wouter Lauemans 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, 14 million containers move 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 1%. So, with the help of someone in the port, it's not hard to see how guys like Roger P, with his pineapple containers, can have their shipments missed or waved through. There's a department, and it's called pre-arrival containers,
And that's where they decide which container gets checked and which container doesn't get checked. And 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 2016, authorities managed to intercept 3.7 tonnes of cocaine, which they traced back to Roger P, also known by his nickname Pete Koster. In fact, Wouter uses the name interchangeably. What really matters here, though, is that 3.7 tonnes 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 purposes of this podcast and tell me who you are? Yes, of course. I'm Kees. And we're not using your real name. We're giving you the pseudonym Kees. Yeah, correct. Are you able to say why that is? For my own safety. I'm in a hotel room in Rotterdam. Kees is an ex-Harbour worker. He's hunched over.
He seems a little nervous because he once helped smuggle cocaine through this very port. Now retired, Case was 26 when he first started his transport company back in the 80s. 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 aware that the port of Rotterdam was a point for which there was a lot of illicit drug smuggling? Yes. Yes.
But nothing pulled, so I didn't care. How did you know? You see. So it's really in plain sight, it's obvious. It was in plain sight at that time, it was in plain sight, yes. Everybody who was working in the port knows it. You hear what's coming in, you see some companies are growing like hell, because it's impossible that they're growing so quickly, because you're in the same business, so you know what the profits are and what you can spend.
Although he knew it was happening, for 10 years or so, Kees ran his company legally. He earned a good living and enjoyed the work. But one day, a friend came asking for a favour. He had some problems with the import of a container. And he asked me to help him. We imported the container for him. Later on, they came to the office and they put up a bag of Marlini for the success and
Well, then I knew it was a drug transport, of course. And from that time on, that was easy money, quick money. How much? 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. What kind of containers they will check and what they will not check.
and then tell them how to do it. And you import it. I had my own lorries, transported to wherever they wanted. Nobody who was in the business from drugs see 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 and meet somebody
The real people over there make an agreement how much you get for it. Yeah. Do you feel comfortable saying where exactly you travel to, to meet people? Mexico, Colombia, Brazil. Did you feel intimidated or fear them when you met them? No, they're normal businessmen. The home 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? Did you need a little bit more money? No, not really. But once you realised... How easy it was. It was so easy to import without any problems. And then, yeah, why not? For 25 to 30 years, Case lived two lives, one with his legitimate business and the other running his illicit operation.
Look, money corrupts. The extra money is black money. You're going out, spending money in clubs. You have enough money, you can do what you want. You feel yourself a king. But even a king knows nothing lasts 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, but at the moment the police catch you. You get also your freedom back. When you start, there is only one end. It can take one year, it can take 10 years, it can take 20 years. But in the end, you lose. You see corruption everywhere. In the public partners, in the private partners, also by customs. That's not good, that's true. This is Heer 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 gave information to a criminal organization about the containers we want to control and we want not to control. After an investigation, Hare'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 Herr, 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, Wouter Lauemans, 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 he 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 2020, he gets in a massive conflict with somebody he 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 $100 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 kidnap the guy. The guy is obviously very scared and he promised to make everything right. So Pete Costa'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 2020, a guy named Ibrahim Azaim, his nickname is Ibo,
gets murdered in Rotterdam, he gets shot. And he was like Roger P's son, from what I heard. He was very close to Roger P. So now, Pete Costa is involved in a violent conflict revolving around 100 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
Are you ready to get an inside look at crime from someone who has investigated some of Australia's worst crimes? Former homicide detective Gary Jubiland sits down with cops, crims, addicts, victims, small-time cheats and big-town lawyers...
as they tell their incredible stories. My house got raided. Next thing you know, I got bail refused. Next thing you know, I'm on a truck to Park Lane Prison. Listen to I Catch Killers early and ad-free on Crimex Plus on Apple Podcasts today or wherever you get your podcasts. In the summer of 2020, I was working for a national newspaper. I was writing about organized crime together with a colleague of mine, Jan Meijers. We heard stories that Encro had fallen.
Wouter's talking about EncroChat, a company that made sophisticated encrypted devices disguised though like ordinary phones. The user could access a secret messaging system. Set up in 2016, it soon became the way criminals communicated across countries and between continents. They all basically thought it was impenetrable. But then in early 2020, French and Dutch authorities began to hack the system.
A gigantic cyber investigation led to 800 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. So far, they've arrested 746 suspects, seized more than 54 million pounds in cash, two tons of cocaine, 77 firearms and 55 luxury cars.
So everybody was like, oh, fuck, what if this guy talked about me or whatever 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, Wouter 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 cellar. And I'm like, torture cellar? What are you talking about? So I was like, what the fuck? A torture cellar? I go back to my then colleague, Jan Meijs, and 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 rammed 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 footrest. Fucking hell. It looked like something out of a horror movie, like Saw or something. It was totally crazy.
In this video, released on the Dutch police's YouTube channel, the 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. The officer says the Dutch police found tools, including hammers, pliers, scalpels and blowtorches. The containers were soundproof.
So when the police found the containers, they put an officer or an agent in the container and they closed the container and they told him 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 Pete Costa.
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. When it started with the theft of 100 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 the Nellis. And the Justice Department was always convinced that they were going to be used. The only thing that happened was the encrohack that got in between those plans, that jammed those plans. In 2022, Roger P was sentenced to 15 years in prison for leading a cocaine smuggling operation. For his role in building the torture chambers, he was given an additional 33 months.
This is Jop Gotmers. He has long grey hair, piercing eyes and he's a friendly chap who was once a European boxing champion. In his youth, Jop 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 in the cocaine business have become. I'd met Jopp at his home, where something caught my eye.
So I noticed, I saw the camera outside the house. Oh yeah. Yeah. So is that, you have to be vigilant all the time? Yeah. What's the big worry now? That they kill me. Still people that you were dealing with back in the day? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We continue to drive through the countryside in the region of Brabant on the Dutch-Belgian border. I believe Brabant is one of the most criminal places
By liquidation, 'jot' 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 we pass large farmhouses and barns. At one point, Joop slows down. I lived in this house. Oh, which one? That one on the... Yeah, here on the corner. With the flag out the front. Yeah, yeah. So, and this... I lived only...
on the first stage because on the ground they can get me with machine guns to kill me. Oh right. I live only upside. As we drive we see groups of cyclists and he tells me we're in a popular tourist region. And here are the chambers. Oh just here? Yeah. See the cameras?
Yeah, there's a camera on the wall every few metres, isn't there? And what's this? This is a dilapidated house. Soon we arrive in the village of Wouwse Plontage, which is where the torture chambers were discovered. And suddenly, Joop is spooked. The cameras, it's too dangerous. But you're worried it's too dangerous to get out? Yeah. Are you worried about my safety? Also, of course. You are my guest. I don't know who the owner is.
But it is more possible that he knows me than that I know him. Sure. I must look out a little bit for my safety. Okay. And your safety. Thank you very much.
The fact that Jop, a big, tough ex-gangster, is unwilling to go any further, even after the Dutch police raided this property in 2020, suggests just how powerful criminal organisations 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 off a...
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 ruthless the drug smugglers are and the people involved in these operations. The cocaine trade is a business with a mediation problem. Back to Wouter 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, 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 violence? 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 bigger than ever. Listening to Wouter, I realised that this investigation also has to get bigger, which for me and David and Stephen means we can't stop here. It's crazy. Everything's just a blur.
You know, one day someone's window's done or your mate gets arrested. There's something different every single day. That's next time on Cocaine Inc. When we leave the Netherlands and follow the cocaine trail to where it's sold on the streets of the UK. Hiya. Sorry to bother you. I'm from the Times newspaper. I'm doing a podcast. Do you know there was a shoot in here 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 Chantarassac. The executive producers are Will Rowe and Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leak with original music by Tom Birchall. Additional support on this episode from Sjoerd de Vries.
And if you want to get in touch with any questions or thoughts on the series, email cocaineinc at thetimes.co.uk.
Are you ready to get an inside look at crime from someone who has investigated some of Australia's worst crimes? It was like Aladdin's cave. The luminol found bloodied footprints and bloodied handprints on a wall. So it's just like a horror movie. Former homicide detective Gary Jubiland sits down with cops, crims, addicts, victims, small-time cheats and big-town lawyers...
as they tell their incredible stories. My house got raided. Next thing you know, I got bail refused. Next thing you know, I'm on a truck to Park Lane Prison. Listen to I Catch Killers early and ad-free on Crymax Plus on Apple Podcasts today or wherever you get your podcasts.