Belgium at risk of becoming ‘narco-state’, judge warns

President of Antwerp court makes comments after anonymous judge warned country was turning into ‘a narco-state’

International drug crime poses a danger to social stability in Belgium, a senior judge has said, after his colleague warned the country was evolving into “a narco-state” where mafia groups were forming “a parallel force” in society.

Bart Willocx, the president of the Antwerp court of appeal, said Belgium was vulnerable to criminality from drug smuggling through the city’s vast port, one of the main entry points into Europe for cocaine smugglers.

“The amount of money that is involved – to influence people, to corrupt people and to bribe – it is so big that it is really a danger for the stability of our society,” he told the Guardian in an interview at his court.

Last October the Antwerp court took the unusual step of publishing an open letter from an anonymous investigative judge, who warned that Belgium was evolving into a narco-state. Extensive mafia structures had taken hold, the anonymous judge wrote, “becoming a parallel force that challenges not only the police, but the judiciary”.

Willocx said Belgium was working to avoid becoming a narco-state: “But it is an evolution and it is a pressure – it is a threat.”

Speaking alongside him, Guido Vermeiren, prosecutor general for the Antwerp and Limburg regions, said he agreed with the anonymous judge. “We are becoming a state with a lot of corruption, with a lot of threats,” he said.

More than 70% of cocaine entering Europe came through Antwerp and Rotterdam in 2024, according to Europol, although the agency said last year that criminals were making greater use of smaller ports.

Belgium’s problem stems from surging amounts of the drug coming from South America, mostly Colombia: a record 121 tonnes of cocaine was seized in the country in 2023 – according to the EU drugs agency – fuelling violent crime. Seizures fell to 44 tonnes in 2024, which the agency suggested could result from better chemical concealment of the drug and criminals shifting operations to smaller ports. Organised drug gangs were thought to be behind a plot to kidnap a Belgian interior minister in 2022 and a spate of shootings in Brussels in 2025.

The senior officials detailed the pervasive criminality, which has spawned violence, shootings, kidnappings, torture and money laundering. “We really have a problem and we should make more investments in staff and in other resources to cope with it,” Willocx said.

In one instance, criminals paid more than €250,000 to a port worker to move a single container, Vermeiren said. Port employees who hesitate or refuse to help the gangs face threats and bombings. “They received letters, photos of their children. There were attacks at their homes with homemade explosives,” Vermeiren said.

Children as young as 13 were paid small sums to break into the port and steal cocaine, the prosecutor said, adding that the gangs “are not interested in what happens with those people”. Vermeiren also described how gangs groomed young people, helped them find jobs in the port and then put pressure on them to do their bidding.

He also described an incident in March 2024 when police foiled an attempt by four men armed with automatic weapons to steal more than 1,500 tonnes of impounded cocaine from a customs warehouse.

Police and hospital employees had been bribed or intimidated into providing confidential information about public servants, such as home addresses of judges, Willocx said.

Belgian judges were increasingly having to live in safe houses. Vermeiren said he knew of multiple people who were under permanent protection. The anonymous judge spent four months in a safe house.

Willocx said it had been very hard for his colleague: “From one day to another, you have to leave your house, you have to leave your family and you are going to live somewhere where nobody knows where you are.”

Meanwhile judges at the Antwerp court of appeal are still waiting for the installation of scanners to check bags at the entrance. Willocx said they had been waiting two years for the security equipment promised by government. Court officials felt nervous whenever defendants or convicted criminals arrived at the court with large bags, he said.

Both men agreed it was possible for judges to conjure up a procedural error to avoid a conviction. “It could happen,” Willocx said. “There is too much pressure on prosecutors or judges. What you see is that if we go on like this, a number of judges will prefer not to work in criminal affairs because of safety reasons, because of the enormous pressure.”

Vermeiren thought it possible that the scale of the threat may already be having an unconscious influence on judges.

The anonymous letter was published as part of the Five to Twelve campaign launched by Antwerp courts and prosecutors to warn that the Belgian justice system was counting down to doomsday. The movement began with street protests by judges last May and has since evolved into a broader campaign to raise public awareness about what is described as a crisis in the justice system that threatens the rule of law.

The judges have proposed 100 reforms, ranging from safer courts, to tackling endemic prison overcrowding, and more attractive salaries and pensions for clerks and judges. Vermeiren said the government – a five-party coalition led by Flemish Conservative Bart De Wever – “recognise the problem, but then it stops”.

Judges say that the Belgian courts system is at breaking point after decades of underfunding. Doubts about adequate resources remain, despite a pledge from the justice ministry last November to spend an extra €1bn by 2029.

Willocx said underfunding courts and prosecutors left the system vulnerable to calls for further reductions because it was deemed to be not working well, which he said was “a vicious circle”.

The scale of organised drug trafficking was exposed when investigators in Belgium, France and the Netherlands cracked the encrypted Sky ECC messaging network used by hundreds of criminals to organise narcotics smuggling, plan money drop offs and order murders. Nearly five years after the first arrests, on 9 March 2021, Belgian authorities announced last month that 1,206 people had so far been convicted, mostly for drug crime, violence, corruption, violation of professional secrecy and weapons possession. Nearly 5,000 potential suspects have been identified.

Cracking the network gave prosecutors real-time insight into a criminal organisation stretching from Dubai to South America. “It was even worse than we thought,” Vermeiren said.