Drug traffickers use yachts under the Polish flag to smuggle drugs across the Atlantic

Criminals are using Polish-flagged yachts to export cocaine and other drugs across the Atlantic from South America to Europe and other countries, the UN and maritime authorities have warned.

Drug traffickers are exploiting a legal loophole that grants Polish ships “de facto immunity” from arrest in international waters, said Julien Garsany, the Brussels representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“When other countries see a ship under the Polish flag and [it’s] “They are suspected of being involved in drug trafficking and basically have no one to give them permission to board,” says Garsany.

The UN has long been concerned about ships flying flags that have no connection with the boats' owners – so-called flags of convenience, which can help smugglers evade inspection at sea.

The Polish flag has become fashionable among criminals who are taking advantage of the rush by British and other boat owners to use the EU country's cheap registration system for small sailing yachts and other boats up to 24 metres in length, the maritime law authority said.

The Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N), a joint US, UK and European drug trafficking operations centre based in Lisbon that focuses mainly on smaller vessels, has registered an increase in the number of Polish-flagged pleasure boats suspected of transporting drugs since 2021.

While MAOC-N monitored 12 Polish-flagged vessels potentially linked to human trafficking in 2021, that number rose to 31 in 2022 and 47 last year. Boats appear on the organization's radar based on intelligence tips, ongoing investigations and suspicious vessel or crew movements.

“If you are a smuggler, you want to get through with as few obstacles as possible. And the flag of a European member state does not usually attract much attention, especially in the Atlantic,” Garsany said.

Poland set up a new EU-funded boat registration system for vessels up to 24 m in length in 2020. The number of boat registrations has increased from around 2,000 initially to almost 77,000 today, with just over a third of owners listing an address outside Poland, according to Polish authorities.

“It's cheap, super fast and doesn't require a lot of information, so of course criminals will try to register with it,” said an analyst at MAOC-N. “It's a fantastic business.”

According to MAOC-N and UNODC, criminals may be taking advantage of the fact that Poland does not properly implement international rules that would allow other countries to board Polish-flagged ships at sea. This means that suspected drug smugglers have been able to escape as long as they do not enter the territorial waters of the country enforcing the rules.

Two years ago, for example, Portuguese authorities searched a ship flying the Polish flag at sea off the Azores Islands, arrested two Dutch citizens and confiscated 1.2 tons of cocaine.

A Portuguese judge later ruled that the operation was illegal because Poland had not authorized it. Although a court overturned that decision earlier this year, Portuguese media reported that the two suspects had since been released and left Portugal, thus avoiding prosecution.

The Polish police's central investigation office, which is supposed to issue permits to board the ships, is currently unable to do so because a recent amendment to the drug law has not yet come into force, according to the Polish Ministry of Health, which is responsible for implementing the UN Convention against Drug Trafficking.

Numerous websites offer Polish yacht registrations starting at prices as low as 395 euros, and some also offer the establishment of a UK or Delaware company as the owner of the boat – which effectively allows customers to conceal their identity when registering.

Since the introduction of the new registration system, the number of seizures of Polish-flagged boats transporting cocaine and other drugs has increased.

MAOC-N has reported 19 seizures of small Polish vessels, most of them from 2021. Law enforcement authorities seized more than 18 tons of cannabis, 13.5 tons of cocaine and 56 kg of MDMA (ecstasy) from yachts and motorboats sailing under the Polish flag, including off the coasts of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.

“What we saw a few years ago was a huge movement of cocaine from South America to West Africa… because criminals know it's easier for us to attack them. [them] when they go directly to Europe,” the MAOC-N analyst said, adding that ships coming to Europe from West Africa may be less likely to be checked for drugs than those coming directly from South America.

While the Polish flag is now particularly popular for small vessels, according to MAOC-N, other flags such as those of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have also been used in the past. The Netherlands changed its rules on boat certificates in 2021 after it was revealed that they were being used by drug traffickers.”

The Polish Ministry of Infrastructure said it had received reports of “incidents of drug smuggling on board [yachts] However, vehicles flying the Polish flag had “no information about the involvement of organised criminal groups in these incidents”.

It also said that “the number of registered vessels – over 70,000 – is not a large scale.” The ministry promised to look into the drug trafficking issue raised by the Financial Times, but at this stage it was “not aware of any concerns raised by international law enforcement agencies.”

The Polish Ministry of Health announced that Warsaw intends to allow inspections of boats flying the Polish flag by the end of the year. “The relevant authorities in Poland are working on changes to the law that will enable them to [the police] to issue such permits,” the ministry said.