Cocaine in Containers: How Traffickers Use the Americas’ Ports and Recruit Port Insiders

ISPI Research Staff

Analysis · Ports · Insider Threat

Cocaine in Containers: How Traffickers Use the Americas’ Ports and Recruit Port Insiders

ISPI Research Staff

Island Security Policy Institute, Honolulu · Editorial standards · November 12, 2026 · Last updated November 12, 2026

TL;DR — Key Points

Most cocaine moving from South America to Europe, and a large share of what moves north, travels hidden inside legitimate shipping containers, and the method only works when someone inside the port chain helps. UNODC says 2023 was a record year, with more than 3,708 tons produced and record seizures in every region. The U.S. State Department’s 2025 narcotics report names Ecuador’s Guayaquil, Machala and Posorja, Costa Rica’s Moín, the Dominican Republic’s Caucedo and Panama’s transshipment ports as key exit points. Europol says only 2 to 10 percent of containers entering EU ports can be physically inspected, and it calls corruption of port insiders the key enabler. For island ports, the lesson is to control people and data, not only boxes.

The short answer

Short answer

Cocaine traffickers in the Americas mostly hide drugs inside legitimate container cargo, often without the shipper knowing, and recover them at the destination port. The method depends on recruited insiders: port workers, truck drivers, logistics staff and sometimes customs officers. The ports most often named in official reports are on Ecuador’s coast, Costa Rica’s Caribbean side, the Dominican Republic and Panama’s transshipment hubs, with Antwerp and Rotterdam among the main European entry points.

A shipping container is a sealed steel box that may pass through a farm, a packing plant, a truck yard, two or three terminals and a transshipment port before anyone opens it. That chain of custody is what traffickers exploit. According to the UNODC Global Report on Cocaine 2023, the most popular method in recent years has been to piggy-back on a legitimate shipment without the shipper’s knowledge, which requires a network of collaborators such as port workers, transport companies, drivers or customs officials.

This explainer follows the cocaine route through the hemisphere’s ports using three primary sources: UNODC’s global data, the U.S. State Department’s country-by-country 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), and Europol’s joint report with the ports of Antwerp, Hamburg/Bremerhaven and Rotterdam. It then sets out what island and small-state ports, in the Pacific and the Caribbean, can take from that record. It extends ISPI’s earlier work on the insider threat in Pacific drug trafficking and ISPI’s analysis of Fiji port security and the inside threat.

How big is the cocaine trade now?

UNODC describes the global cocaine market as continuing to break its own records. According to the UNODC World Drug Report 2025, estimated illegal production reached more than 3,708 tons in 2023, about a third (34 percent) more than the year before. UNODC attributes that mainly to more coca cultivation in Colombia and updated yield data that raised Colombia’s production estimate by some 50 percent (UNODC).

Seizures rose too. UNODC reports that global cocaine seizures reached a record in 2023, with increases in all regions and a 68 percent rise in the quantity seized worldwide over 2019 to 2023. An estimated 25 million people used cocaine in 2023, up from 17 million in 2013 (UNODC World Drug Report 2025).

The main flows still run from the Andean countries to North America and to Europe, directly or, to a lesser extent, via West and Central Africa. Reported cocaine seizures in Western and Central Europe exceeded those in North America in 2023 for the fifth year in a row (UNODC World Drug Report 2025). Seizures in the longstanding markets of the Americas, Europe and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) rose 12 percent in 2023 to 2,235 tons, while seizures on emerging and trans-shipment routes through Africa and Asia rose 85 percent (UNODC World Drug Report 2025).

Seizure figures measure law enforcement activity as well as trafficking. A rise can mean more cocaine, better targeting, or both. UNODC itself presents seizures alongside production, use, treatment and death data rather than as a direct measure of flow (UNODC World Drug Report 2025).

How does cocaine get into a container?

The UNODC Global Report on Cocaine 2023 describes several ways, and they differ mainly in who has to be corrupted and where:

Front companies. Traffickers organize their own shipments through companies they control, so the cargo, paperwork and consignee are all part of the scheme.
Piggy-backing, or “rip-on/rip-off.” Drugs are placed in someone else’s legitimate container, typically a large company’s licit cargo, at the origin terminal (“rip-on”) and removed at the destination before the real consignee receives it (“rip-off”). UNODC says this method relies on port workers, truck drivers or others with access to the terminal.
Contamination at other stages. Cocaine can be introduced away from the port, in transit to the port, in the port itself or even at sea. UNODC reports drugs disguised in other products, mixed into cargo and concealed in the structure of the container.
Drop-offs at sea. UNODC notes that container ships are also known to drop cocaine off to be picked up by speedboats, a known tactic for vessels bound for the Netherlands and Belgium.

The State Department adds that traffickers keep adapting. For Belgium, the 2025 INCSR reports that officials saw smaller shipments, alternative routes and chemical mixtures that change cocaine’s smell, color and appearance so it is harder to detect, with the cocaine extracted later in specialized labs at the destination.

The common thread is access. A rip-on needs someone who can reach a container after it has been checked and sealed. A rip-off needs someone who knows when and where that container will be, and someone who can drive it, open it or release it. That is why port security agencies increasingly treat cocaine trafficking as an insider-threat problem, not only a detection problem.

Which ports in the Americas are named?

The State Department’s 2025 INCSR covers each major drug-transit country. The table below lists what its Volume I chapters say about ports and containers. Figures are the department’s, for the periods it states, and are not comparable across countries (2025 INCSR, Volume I).

Selected port findings, 2025 INCSR Volume I (U.S. Department of State, March 2025)
Country	Ports named	What the report says
Ecuador	Guayaquil (four terminals: DP World, TPG, NAPORTEC, CONTECON), Machala (Yilport), Posorja	Trafficking groups extensively exploited these ports to ship cocaine in containers to Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. As of Sept. 18, 2024, authorities inspected 17 percent of containerized exports from Guayaquil and Posorja. All outbound export containers are scanned at Guayaquil and Machala, but authorities lack capacity to analyze all images.
Colombia	Cartagena	A U.S.-supported police port unit in Cartagena, a container targeting center and a chemical verification unit seized about 89,500 gallons of sulfuric acid in March 2024, the largest seizures of that precursor in Colombian history; police reported the containers came from Australia.
Panama	Transshipment ports and the Canal	Up to 40 percent of north-bound Colombian cocaine passes through Panama’s exclusive economic zone. More than four million containers are transshipped at Panamanian ports each year. The Port Task Force seized over 14 MT of cocaine in the first nine months of 2024.
Costa Rica	Moín (Caribbean coast)	Costa Rica remained a primary first-stop transshipment point; cocaine destined for Europe, and to a lesser extent the U.S., transits Moín.
Dominican Republic	Caucedo	Authorities seized over 26 MT of narcotics in the first ten months of 2024 (79 percent cocaine), most at Caucedo, targeting transshipped containers from South American ports.
Guatemala	Atlantic and Pacific ports; Puerto Quetzal	Guatemala inspects containers entering its ports but historically rarely found narcotics; a U.S.-mentored task force began work at Puerto Quetzal in 2023.
Mexico	Manzanillo; Lázaro Cárdenas and Veracruz (planned)	The U.S., the Mexican Navy and UNODC launched the Container Control Programme at Manzanillo, Mexico’s busiest port, in August 2023; expansion to Lázaro Cárdenas and Veracruz was tentatively scheduled for January 2025.
Peru	Callao, Paita, Matarani	Peru expanded the Container Control Programme with new joint control units at Paita and Matarani, alongside Callao.
Jamaica	Island ports	The report cites consistent reports of commercial containers disappearing each month, worsened by leadership turnover and vacancies in the port authority.
Suriname	Not named	Criminals use maritime shipping containers to move most illicit drugs through Suriname, most of it likely destined for Europe.

Two patterns stand out. First, transshipment hubs such as Panama, Caucedo and Moín matter as much as the origin ports, because a container that changes ships can be reached by a new set of hands. Second, technology alone does not close the gap. Ecuador scans every outbound export container at its main terminals, yet the State Department says authorities lack the capacity to review all the images (2025 INCSR).

Ecuador: how a transit country became a front line

Ecuador is not a major cocaine producer. The State Department says its Pacific coastline, dollarized economy and position between Colombia and Peru make it an attractive target for criminal groups, which ship cocaine through it to the United States, Europe and Asia. Ecuadorian authorities have reported Colombian, Mexican, Albanian and other transnational groups operating in the country (2025 INCSR).

The violence that followed is measurable. UNODC reports that Ecuador’s homicide rate rose from 7.8 per 100,000 people in 2020 to 45.7 per 100,000 in 2023 (UNODC World Drug Report 2025). After gunmen broke into a public television channel during a live broadcast on Jan. 9, 2024, President Noboa declared a state of emergency and a non-international armed conflict, and the decree listed 22 criminal groups and gangs as terrorist organizations. Voters approved security measures in an April 2024 referendum, including allowing the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens (2025 INCSR).

Enforcement numbers rose at the same time. As of Sept. 26, 2024, Ecuador had seized 212.3 metric tons of illegal drugs, including 187.4 tons of cocaine, a 24 percent increase on the same period of 2023 (2025 INCSR). Police conducted 71,221 container inspections at Guayaquil’s four terminals in that period, compared with 105,237 in all of 2023 (2025 INCSR).

The Ecuador case is relevant to small states for one reason: a port that becomes a preferred exit point can import the violence along with the trade. The UNODC World Drug Report 2025 says the recent rise in cocaine seizures has occurred in parallel with increasing violence in the Caribbean, largely stemming from competition between gangs over drug markets.

The destination end: Antwerp, Rotterdam and the insider market

Most of what leaves Guayaquil or Caucedo in a contaminated container is meant to be removed somewhere else. The State Department reports that Belgian customs seized a record 116 metric tons of cocaine at the Port of Antwerp in 2023, and that half of those seizures were in shipments from Ecuador that had transited the country but originated elsewhere (2025 INCSR). Seizures in the first half of 2024 fell to 22 tons, half the level of the same period of 2023, though the number of seizures did not fall. Belgian customs began deploying mobile scanners in 2024 to screen high-risk containers (2025 INCSR).

Europol’s 2023 joint report with the security committee of the ports of Antwerp, Hamburg/Bremerhaven and Rotterdam explains why insiders are central. EU ports handle more than 90 million containers a year, and only between 2 and 10 percent can be physically inspected. Criminal networks coordinate local networks of corrupted port insiders and use insider data to select shipments less likely to be inspected (Europol port report).

The report highlights one method in particular: the misappropriation of container reference codes, or “PIN code fraud.” A corrupted logistics company employee provides the code that releases a container, and a driver collects it, so nobody needs to be physically inside the port area. Europol estimates that at least 200 tons of cocaine moved through Antwerp and Rotterdam this way in recent years (Europol port report).

Europol also describes the price list. Bribes may reach hundreds of thousands of euros, the highest fees go to essential links such as crane operators, planners and staff with IT access, and coordinators of extraction teams receive 7 to 15 percent of the value of the load (Europol port report). The list of people who can be targeted is long: port workers, shipping company staff, freight forwarders and agents, importers, transport companies, terminal and security staff, law enforcement and customs (Europol port report).

How traffickers recruit port insiders

Both UNODC and Europol describe recruitment as a mix of money and pressure. The UNODC Global Report on Cocaine 2023 reports, citing a Belgian prosecutor, that port employees sometimes face threats and may feel forced to give traffickers logistics information, and it records reported cases of intimidation, kidnapping, torture and murder of port workers in French port cities, specifically Marseille and Le Havre. It also describes owners and managers of companies with long trading records being approached because their shipments are less likely to be inspected.

In Brazil, UNODC interviewees described one major criminal group as having extensive links among truck drivers and longshoremen at the port of Santos to connect the right people to the right cargo (UNODC Global Report on Cocaine 2023). The same report says the rip-on/rip-off method is widely used for medium to large quantities, and according to one Spanish interviewee it is the most common contamination method at the port of Valencia.

For a security manager, that profile points to specific roles: anyone who can see or change container status data, anyone who plans stowage or yard moves, crane and straddle-carrier operators, gate and release staff, truck drivers with terminal access, and customs or police officers who choose which boxes to inspect. ISPI’s PB-07, Supply Chain Insider Risk in Island Ports makes the same point for island ports, where one employee may hold several of those roles at once.

What rules and programs already cover this?

Several international and national programs touch container security, but none is designed around the insider problem alone:

The ISPS Code. The IMO says the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code entered into force under SOLAS chapter XI-2 on July 1, 2004. Part A is mandatory for contracting governments, port authorities and shipping companies; Part B gives recommended guidance. It is a security framework for ships and port facilities, not a drug-control regime, but its access-control and port facility security plan requirements are where insider controls usually sit.
The UNODC-WCO Container Control Programme (CCP). Set up by UNODC and the World Customs Organization in 2004, the CCP aims to build capacity in risk management, supply chain security and trade facilitation in seaports, airports and land border crossings to stop the cross-border movement of illicit goods (UNODC). The INCSR records CCP units in Mexico and Peru, among others (2025 INCSR).
The U.S. Container Security Initiative (CSI). Announced in January 2002 as a counterterrorism program, CSI places CBP officers in foreign ports to identify and prescreen high-risk containers before they are loaded for the United States. CBP says its 61 operational CSI ports prescreen over 80 percent of maritime containerized cargo imported into the U.S. The State Department notes CSI cooperation with Ecuador since 2018 (2025 INCSR).
Port-level measures recommended by Europol. These include limiting access to container reference codes on a need-to-know basis, logging and tracing access to sensitive data, warning systems that flag irregularities, and more checks of truck driver credentials when containers are released (Europol port report).

Europol adds a warning that applies directly to smaller ports: closing one loophole is likely to push criminal networks toward other methods or to secondary ports with weaker security (Europol port report). In other words, as the large hubs tighten up, the risk shifts to smaller ports.

What this means for island and small-state ports

Island ports in the Pacific and Caribbean are rarely the destination for multi-ton container loads, but they sit on the same routes. UNODC notes that at-sea rendezvous using small and medium-sized vessels are widely used around West and North Africa, in Central America and the Caribbean, and in the Pacific islands (UNODC Global Report on Cocaine 2023). UNODC counts Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) among the longstanding cocaine markets, where combined seizures rose 12 percent in 2023 (UNODC World Drug Report 2025). ISPI’s CM-13, The Blue Highway: Drug Trafficking Networks in the Pacific traces how those routes reach Pacific island communities.

Small ports also have structural features that make insider controls harder. Staff are few, roles overlap, and in a small community the people who handle cargo often know the people who inspect it. ISPI’s Honolulu Harbor and the single-port state analysis shows how much an island can depend on one port, which raises the stakes if that port is compromised. Five practical steps follow from the official record:

Treat release data as a security asset. Follow Europol’s advice: restrict who can see container release codes, log every access, and alert on unusual lookups or releases.
Check the driver, not just the paperwork. Verify truck driver identity and authorization at the gate on every container release.
Make sure scanning leads to analysis. Ecuador’s experience shows that scanning every container means little without trained analysts to review the images. Budget for the analysts, not just the machines.
Run an insider-threat program for port and customs roles. Cover vetting, rotation of sensitive duties, a confidential reporting channel and support for staff who are approached or threatened. ISPI’s free Insider Threat Program Template includes cargo, credential and gate scenarios.
Use the regional and international programs that exist. The CCP offers joint port control units and training, and regional customs and police bodies share data. Keep port security plans under the ISPS Code current, including access control.

These controls also support other port priorities. The same data-access discipline that blocks PIN code fraud is part of the cyber controls covered in ISPI’s explainer on the Coast Guard maritime cybersecurity rule, and the transshipment logic in this piece mirrors the maritime chokepoints explainer. For U.S. policy on Pacific island drug trafficking, see ISPI’s analysis of HR 9508, the proposed Pacific Islands drug trafficking liaison initiative.

What this analysis does and does not claim

This piece reports what UNODC, the U.S. State Department, Europol, CBP and the IMO have published. It does not estimate how much cocaine passes through any single port, because seizures reflect enforcement effort as well as volume. Country figures in the table come from the periods the State Department reports and should not be compared directly. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment and the EU Drugs Agency’s cocaine market pages could not be opened from ISPI’s research system on Nov. 12, 2026 (HTTP 403), so neither is cited here. More port and maritime research is collected in ISPI’s ports and maritime security hub and insider threat hub.

Frequently asked questions

How is cocaine smuggled in shipping containers?

Most often by hiding it in a legitimate company’s cargo without the shipper knowing, then removing it at the destination port before the real owner receives the container. UNODC calls this rip-on/rip-off. Traffickers also use front companies, hide drugs in other products or in the container structure, or drop packages at sea for speedboats to collect.

Which ports in the Americas are used most for cocaine shipments?

The U.S. State Department’s 2025 narcotics report names Ecuador’s Guayaquil, Machala and Posorja as heavily exploited, and identifies Costa Rica’s Moín, the Dominican Republic’s Caucedo and Panama’s transshipment ports as major transit points. Belgium reported that half of the record 116 tons seized at Antwerp in 2023 came in shipments from Ecuador.

What is PIN code fraud at ports?

It is the misuse of container reference codes, the codes that authorize a container’s release from a terminal. According to Europol, a corrupted logistics employee passes the code to traffickers and a driver collects the container, so no one needs to be inside the port. Europol estimates at least 200 tons of cocaine moved through Antwerp and Rotterdam this way in recent years.

What percentage of shipping containers are inspected?

Europol says EU ports handle more than 90 million containers a year and only between 2 and 10 percent can be physically inspected. In Ecuador, the State Department reports that 17 percent of containerized exports from Guayaquil and Posorja were inspected as of September 2024, although all outbound export containers there are scanned.

Does the ISPS Code stop drug smuggling?

Not directly. The ISPS Code, in force since July 1, 2004, is a security regime for ships and port facilities. Its access-control and security-plan requirements help limit who can reach cargo, but drug interdiction relies on customs and police programs such as the UNODC-WCO Container Control Programme.

ISPI publishes its research free under CC BY 4.0. If your port authority, customs service or island government needs an insider-risk review of container release and gate procedures or a tabletop exercise on a compromised terminal, you can commission research from ISPI. ISPI is a nonprofit organization with its 501(c)(3) application pending.

Sources

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