Belgian prosecutors put alleged 45-tonne cocaine network on trial

Belgian prosecutors put an alleged 45-tonne cocaine network before a Brussels court in a trial of 31 defendants, a Guardian news report said Oct. 20.

The case matters because it links Belgian defendant Flor Bressers and Brazilian defendant Sérgio Roberto de Carvalho to suspected Latin America-Europe trafficking; a 2020 operation in which Carvalho was cornered produced 45 arrests, the report said.

The trial has been held at the Justitia courtroom in Brussels, a secured federal venue inside the former NATO headquarters complex. The report said armed officers guarded the site during monthlong hearings that began after a police convoy arrived on Sept. 7.

Bressers, 40, faces charges including kidnapping, unlawful detention, extortion involving firearms and leading a criminal organisation, according to the report. He was arrested in Zurich in 2022 after two years as a fugitive and had been on Europol’s most-wanted list since 2021.

Carvalho, 68, was arrested on June 21, 2022, in Budapest in an operation involving Interpol, Europol, Brazilian federal police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the report said. He was based in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state, in the tri-border region with Argentina and Paraguay.

Prosecutors said Bressers and Carvalho led a multinational organisation that moved hundreds of millions of dollars through front companies, including Antwerp water-treatment firm Kriva Rochem, the report said. The money was allegedly laundered through cryptocurrencies, financial markets and property.

According to Brazilian court documents cited by the report, Carvalho’s group acquired cocaine produced in Peru and Bolivia and moved it through Brazil’s midwest to ports including Paranaguá and Natal. Prosecutors said the drugs were then shipped to Europe and distributed in an unknown number of countries.

Spanish police said Carvalho lived in a €2 million mansion in Marbella under the identity of Paul Wouter, described as a wealthy Surinamese citizen, the report said. Prosecutors said he coordinated smuggling between 2017 and 2020 through routes involving Portugal, Spain, Rotterdam and Antwerp.

The report said Portuguese police suspected Carvalho had links to Primeiro Comando da Capital, Brazil’s leading criminal organisation. It did not report a finding by the Brussels court on that suspected link.

The allegations remain before the court, and the report did not cite defence responses from Bressers, Carvalho or the other defendants. No verdict date was provided in the report.

Source: news report, The Guardian, Oct. 20, 2026.