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The alleged head of a large cocaine-smuggling operation, who was one of Europe’s most wanted men at the time of his arrest, has gone on trial in Brussels.
Flor Bressers, 39, was flanked by heavily armed security officers when he arrived at the courtroom on Monday, dressed in a sharp suit and with slicked-back hair.
He is alleged to have jointly led a network that imported massive quantities of cocaine into Europe from South America, and will be tried alongside more than 30 alleged accomplices, including a Dutch lawyer and a former London banker.
Bressers is alleged to have earned €230m (£199m) from 10 cocaine shipments, while a second alleged ringleader, Sérgio Roberto de Carvalho, a Brazilian in his 60s, is alleged to have netted about €200m.
Prosecutors estimate that the 30 defendants earned half a billion euros from smuggling, Belgium’s De Standaard reported. Bressers is alleged to have organised at least some of the 10 shipments from a private yacht in Seychelles, where he was staying during the Covid pandemic in 2020.
The trial, which was scheduled to have begun in Bruges, where the investigation started, was relocated to a court at Nato’s former headquarters in Brussels for security reasons, as the main defendants are considered a flight risk.
The investigation began in 2020 after police seized 3.2 tonnes of cocaine at the Dutch port of Rotterdam, hidden in a shipment of manganese ore from Brazil. The shipment was destined for a water treatment company in the Belgian port of Antwerp, which is suspected of being used as a front by the traffickers.
Several individuals suspected of being linked to the company were arrested in West Flanders, and police subsequently identified the presumed organisers – Bressers and De Carvalho – who were allegedly the network’s two main figures.
After a series of arrests in Belgium, Spain and Dubai, Bressers was detained in Zurich in February 2022 and extradited the following autumn. De Carvalho was arrested in Hungary in 2023 before being jailed in Belgium.
Antwerp has become Europe’s main port of entry for cocaine, while Rotterdam and Le Havre in France are also grappling with the relentlessly growing illegal trade.
Prosecutors say the 2020 seizure in Rotterdam was just the tip of the iceberg, with the network suspected of having imported tonnes of cocaine between 2019 and 2020.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
