These look suspicious.
There are several large packages in the bow.
In October 2021,
customs officials in Hong Kong
announced a series of record anti-smuggling seizures
when a group of shady looking men were spotted shifting containers
from a truck to a speedboat.
When law enforcement gave chase, the men fled,
leaving behind contraband
with an estimated street value of $210 million.
It proved an eclectic haul—
fake luxury handbags, high-end watches, cigars, food,
even exotic animal parts, including endangered shark fin.
The origin of the suspected smuggling goods
is still under our investigation.
In the same month,
police apprehended an air cargo consignment arriving from Mexico.
As well as the stated solar panels,
the crates included 180 kilos of carefully packed methamphetamine.
Three local men were arrested and bailed pending further inquiries.
Neither represented the first case of its kind in Hong Kong,
even if the scale of the busts set them apart.
Smuggling is a major revenue driver for organized crime across the globe,
with Hong Kong a major hub
in one of the most truly globalized of illicit trades.
[THE BUSINESS OF CRIME]
This is
In this episode, we’ll be taking a look at the global smuggling trade—
the factors that drive it
and why business is booming just as much as ever.
Nearly all transnational criminal syndicates
are going to be involved in this in some way, shape, or form.
Smuggling has a long and complex history.
It's been around for at least as long as the first taxes
and regulations on trade.
In 18th-century England,
it meant tea, opium, silk, and spices.
In the 21st, it means illegal drugs and human trafficking gangs.
There’s billions of dollars to be made from narco trafficking.
Where there’s a will, there’s almost always a way.
Things have a knack of getting where the market needs them to be,
illicit or otherwise.
Contemporary smugglers across the world
might traffic anything from tobacco to art, food, exotic animals,
narcotics, guns, and even people.
Do you really care what you’re smuggling,
what you’re trafficking?
It’s about making money quickly.
In essence, it’s whatever sells, however unconscionable.
In 2019, it was reported that Interpol estimated
migrant smuggling one of the most widespread and profitable activities
for organized crime in the EU,
worth hundreds of billions.
Human trafficking is hugely profitable.
It's essentially pure profit.
Human trafficking victims
are generating hundreds or thousands of dollars,
and when they’re no longer useful, they're let go.
The means differ.
Transport might range from sea and air cargo to lorry freight,
or maybe just an individual drugs mule loaded with contraband
and dropped off at an airport with nothing more than a boarding pass
and a pat on the back.
Drug traffickers would get people that are called mules,
people who would put stuff like cocaine in condoms
and swallow the condoms, and then cross the border that way.
Some destinations are more popular than others.
Ports are naturally favorable— the bigger, the better.
It’s easier to sneak through a few illegal containers
when hundreds of tons of perfectly legitimate cargo
is being processed on a daily basis.
Even a global pandemic couldn’t slow down
the mass importation of Latin American cocaine shipments
into Antwerp, Belgium—
numbers there were even thought to have risen over 2020.
So there's a whole kind of industry of people who are devising new ways
to get this stuff from production to the actual ports.
Every month, kilos of hashish pass through the Strait of Gibraltar,
a 13-kilometer stretch of water
that separates the very southern tip of Spain from Morocco.
Here, smuggling has a long lineage.
On the Spanish side sits La Linea, a small, post-industrial city,
where youth unemployment sits above 60 percent.
The last decade or so has seen a spike of news reports
and documentaries declaring it “Costa Del Narcos.”
Hash, cocaine, tobacco from next door Gibraltar—
these are the bedrocks of a black economy
with far more opportunities than its legal counterpart.
For others, there isn’t even the fig leaf of necessity
to point to as justification.
In November, reports broke detailing a massive investigation
into Portuguese UN peacekeeping troops
stationed in the Central African Republic.
It’s been alleged that soldiers had been using official military planes
to smuggle gold, diamonds, and drugs
out of one of the world’s most impoverished
but resource rich nations.
Portuguese authorities have detained ten suspects,
as Operation Myriad, as it is known,
is the result of a denunciation made at the end of 2019.
It was, as Portugal’s foreign minister declared,
a very regrettable affair,
even if it shouldn’t muddy the nation’s sterling contributions
to international security.
Uncovered smuggling plots
often oscillate between the relentlessly grim to surreal.
In 2021,
a prominent Spanish art collector narrowly avoided prison time
after being found guilty of attempting to smuggle
a priceless Picasso out of the country.
Jaime Botín claimed he’d merely been transporting it
to a Geneva storage facility,
an excuse that landed him with a multimillion-euro fine
and a jail sentence only overturned on appeal due to ill health.
Despite vague cultural notions of romance and adventure,
smuggling is anything but a victimless crime.
Like any other illicit market with huge potential rewards,
it has a huge capacity for violence and exploitation.
In recent years,
you’ve seen an increase in the traffic of human beings,
of sex workers.
That’s something that’s very profitable
for those criminal organizations.
Vulnerable migrants forking out huge sums
to be trafficked in hope of safety,
expendable drug mules paid a pittance to carry narcotics across borders,
corrupt soldiers stripping a country of its natural wealth—
these are some of the real-world scenarios likely unfolding
in the time it’s taken you to watch this video.
Smuggling is and always has been big business.
For the three men arrested in conjunction with the Hong Kong raids,
the potential rewards were enormous.
The risks, however, were just as great.
If found guilty,
they could be set to face a lifetime behind bars.