A 34th defendant was inflicted a work sentence of 300 hours. For most defendants, these penalties are heavier than those pronounced at first instance.
Thirty-four people appeared in this case for having been part of an active criminal organization in cocaine traffic between Latin America and Europe, from 2018 to 2022. According to the Court of Appeal, the criminal organization would have generated nearly 660 million euros in profits thanks to this traffic.
The survey, with the code name “Black Eagle”, had started in September 2020, after the police discovery, in garage boxes in Evere, large quantities of acetone and a barrel in which the equivalent of 600 kilograms of cocaine had been diluted. Depending on the investigations, these were clandestine laboratories where cocaine was extracted, by chemical processes, from various legal substances such as fruits, cement or coal, imported by containers from South America via the ports of Antwerp and Ghent.
The decryption, by the police in 2021, of the Sky ECC messaging had marked a major advance for the investigation.
