Cheap amphetamine

Drug that makes Syrian regime millions trafficked through Europe, report says

The cheap amphetamine-like Captagon pills drive huge funds for Bashar Assad’s war machine.

BY CLAUDIA CHIAPPA

Europe is a key transit hub for Captagon, a dirt-cheap illicit drug popular in the Middle East that directly profits President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria.

Traffickers have increasingly been using European countries to ship Captagon tablets traveling from the Middle East back to the Arabian Peninsula, according to a new report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the German federal criminal police office (BKA).

Smuggling the drug — which retails on the street at around $3 a pill — through Europe is likely “intended to avoid controls by authorities in the destination markets, who are unlikely to suspect that Captagon tablets would be shipped from the EU,” the authors said.

Captagon is a highly addictive amphetamine-type drug largely produced and consumed in the Middle East, especially Syria and Lebanon. Its illicit trade has created a business estimated to be worth as much as $57 billion.

Production of the drug has been widely linked to the Assad regime in Damascus, with ties connecting the drug trade to multiple Syrian officials and members of Assad's family. According to the report, German authorities confirmed that the Captagon trade is “under the patronage” of the Assad regime, which directly benefits from shipments.

The drug provides a "financial lifeline" to the Syrian regime's war machine, according to the U.K. government, which wrote earlier this year that the dictator’s brother, Maher al-Assad, "commands the unit of the Syrian Army facilitating the distribution and production of the drug."

The Syrian government did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.

Earlier this year, the EU joined the United States and the United Kingdom in sanctioning Syrian individuals connected to the Captagon trade — including members of the Assad family, officials in the Syrian army and leaders of regime-affiliated militias.

European transit hub

Europe is not a “significant consumer market” for Captagon, the report said, with most of the market lying in some Middle Eastern countries and in the Arabian Peninsula, notably Saudi Arabia, which has been the destination for some of the largest Captagon shipments in recent years.

On Thursday, the United Arab Emirates foiled an attempt to smuggle more than 80 million captagon tablets into the country, according to the country’s interior ministry. The 13 tons of pills, with a market value of €700 million, were found hidden in five shipping containers.

But despite lacking a market for the drug, Europe has become a popular transit hub.

According to the EMCDDA report, which collected data from Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Romania, authorities have seized multiple large shipments of Captagon tablets in Europe since 2018, most of them in transit toward Arabian Peninsula countries.

In total, approximately 127 million tablets and 1,773 kilograms (an additional 10.6 million tablets) were seized in European countries, according to the data collected for the report, with the largest seizure recorded in Italy in 2020.

Shipments were either directly rerouted to their destination countries or unloaded and repacked in the EU.

Dutch Captagon production

The report also found evidence of Captagon production in Europe, mostly in the Netherlands.

Dutch authorities have reported discovering one or two large production sites — where Captagon tablets are produced from amphetamine powder — on their territory every year.

“It is believed that Captagon tablet production is not a typical activity of synthetic drug producers in the country, but rather an opportunistic way to make money,” the report said.

According to the report, it is mostly Syrian and Lebanese nationals who are involved in the Captagon trafficking trade — some residing in the EU and others making frequent visits to the region — while drug-related criminal networks in the EU don’t appear to be involved.

The report calls for a coordinated EU response to tackle the two main issues: The production of Captagon tablets within the EU; and the use of EU countries as transit zones for tablets produced elsewhere.