Page 14 - bne magazine September 2023

14 I Companies & Markets bne September 2023
Turkey regularly seizes cocaine at Mersin port in banana containers shipped from Ecuador.
Separately, Italian police said on July 21 that they seized five tonnes of cocaine in a ship destined for Turkey.
Analysts assessing the drug trade roughly apply a one-to-10 rule to estimate the actual drug flow based on seizures, with the great majority of drugs making it through to illicit markets. Banana shipments are seen as "a usual suspect" in the cocaine trade. Cheese shipments are also popular with cocaine dispatchers.
Ecuador annually exports around 3mn tonnes of bananas.
Turkish port operator Yilport Holding, a unit of Yildirim Group Holding, bought 50-year port concession rights at Puerto Bolivar in 2016.
According to the Global Report on Cocaine 2023 issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Turkey seized a record three tonnes of cocaine in 2021. UNODC’s conclusion is that Turkey’s role as a cocaine transit country has grown hugely in the past 10 years.
Turkey’s drug-running underground has evolved quickly in recent years. Turkish criminal networks involved in the
cocaine trade between the Middle East and Latin America lately merged with fentanyl traffickers, according to an April report published by Homeland Security Today.
The article takes a look at Turkey’s history of drug traffick- ing, including its role as a bridge between source and desti- nation countries for heroin in the 1970s and 1980s.
Politicians, bureaucrats and criminal groups in Turkey are involved in the cocaine trade, which has flourished under the Erdogan administration’s authoritarian regime, the report suggests. Anti-drug trafficking teams in Turkey were almost entirely purged after corruption scandals in 2013 and a coup attempt in 2016. That is thought to have helped drug traffick- ing to boom in the country.
A recent seizure of 480 barrels of fentanyl in Guatemala, found in containers of a Turkish-flagged vessel, is said to have highlighted Turkey’s involvement in drug trafficking.
There are reportedly indications that Turkey’s Grey Wolves, a far-right paramilitary organisation affiliated with the Nation- alist Movement Party (MHP), the junior partner in Turkey’s ruling coalition, may be involved in cocaine trafficking with links to the Sinaloa Cartel in Latin America.
Romanian route for Ukrainian grain under increasing pressure
Iulian Ernst in Bucharest
The closure of the Black Sea corridor for Ukraine’s grains and the more recent bombing of Ukraine’s Danube ports have put increasing pressure on Romania’s grain route: the land transportation (road and railway) and Constanta Port.
Constanta Port is already preparing to handle more Ukrainian grain, but the investments made so far in expanding the port’s capacity might not be sufficient.
It is estimated that Romania will need to transfer 27mn tonnes of grain and agricultural products from Ukraine in the coming marketing year, up from 18mn tonnes in the previous year.
We are ready for a larger quantity of Ukrainian grain," Dan Dolghin, a director at Comvex, a company that uses Constanta, told AFP his company had invested €3mn last summer to speed up its barge unloading capacity.
Constanta Port’s nameplate capacity is 25mn tonnes per year. The weak point, according to port operators, is the slow uploading speed.
www.bne.eu
However, the port might not be the bottleneck after the Russians signalled intentions to bomb Ukraine’s Danube ports where the barges were until recently loaded for Constanta.
Most of the merchandise might have to be sent to Constanta, under the new circumstances, by road or railway. Romania has launched projects to strengthen the land transport connectivity with Ukraine but it’s not clear whether the capacity increased dramatically.
Moldova, which harvested a wheat crop twice as large as last year (1.2mn tonnes) and will start harvesting sunflower soon, faces problems as well although its exports are comparatively smaller.
Its only port on the Danube, Giurgiulesti, is built on Ukrainian land under an arrangement with its neighbour and is located close to Reni port – already being bombed by Russian forces.
Moldavskie Vedomosti quoted by G4media writes that large traffic jams are forming at checkpoints in the south of Moldova, near Giurgiulesti.