South Africa’s State v Rodriquez case shows how wine consignments are used to smuggle drugs and other contraband

As workers were routinely packing boxes of wine bottles onto pallets at Eerste Hoop Wine Estate in Western Cape, South Africa, in 2017, preparing for export to Belgium, they noticed that one pallet was poorly packed. Worried that this would cause wine bottles to break, they began to reopen the boxes – and made one of South Africa’s greatest heroin discoveries.¹ Approximately 963 kilograms of heroin was discovered in 253 boxes.²

Mark Ortega Rodriquez, 23, was charged in connection with the seizure.³ During the trial, it was revealed that Rodriquez’s stepfather purchased wine from Eerste Hoop Wine Estate to be delivered to Belgium. Rodriquez collected the boxes from the farm and took them to a storage unit, presumably to conceal heroin in them. He then returned the boxes, poorly repacked, for export.

The trial, which is ongoing, has highlighted the adaptive and innovative methods adopted by drug traffickers, in particular the hijacking of legitimate wine shipments to transport drugs. Wine consignments are popular among drug traffickers because they offer several ways to transport drugs and other contraband around the world, as explained below.

Figure 2 Movements of the heroin shipment uncovered at Eerste Hoop Wines estate before it was seized, and the route through which the shipment was intended to travel, via Cape Town, then onwards to Belgium and Germany.

SOURCE: State v Rodriquez court testimony.

Contraband can be placed in boxes or crates of wine bottles

According to interviews with customs officials in Cape Town, the most common and easiest method of smuggling via wine consignments is simply to place the drugs in the boxes and crates in which wine bottles are usually transported.⁴ Usually, the drugs are packed so that the boxes that hold a mix of drugs and wine bottles – or exclusively drugs – are contained at the centre of the pallet on which boxes are shipped and so are more concealed.⁵ In the Rodriquez case, boxes in the first three layers of the pallet contained wine bottles, while those from the fourth layer downwards contained only packets of heroin wrapped in plastic.

This method is also used to smuggle illegal wildlife products. On 3 May 2019, two boxes containing rhino horns weighing 45 kg and valued at 38 million South African rands (ZAR) (US$2 623 280) were found between 31 boxes of wine at a shipping exports company in Kempton Park, South Africa.⁶ The consignment was destined for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.⁷

In July 2012, 46 elephant tusks valued at approximately ZAR 10 million (US$4 626 250) were found hidden behind boxes of wine at a storage facility near the Cape Town International Airport.⁸ The tusks, weighing 500 kilograms, were destined for Hong Kong.⁹

Although this method is considered the easiest for traffickers, it is also relatively easy for law enforcement to detect.¹⁰ Drug traffickers using this method may also bribe customs and/or law enforcement officials to turn a blind eye to the consignment.¹¹

Contraband hidden in compartments in wine crates

By placing drugs in hidden compartments, which further reduces their visibility, smugglers may slightly reduce their risk of detection.¹² However, the added weight of those crates can alert customs and law-enforcement officials, who can then flag them for closer inspection. This is exactly what happened at a cargo warehouse at the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg in April 2019, when customs officers noticed that a wine crate destined for Amsterdam was heavier than usual. The hidden compartment at the base of the wine crate contained heroin worth approximately ZAR 1.5 million (US$103 394).¹³

Less than a month later, cocaine, heroin and methamphet­amine worth ZAR 4.4 million (US$307 073) were found concealed in two wine crates at a house in Kempton Park, Gauteng. The wine crates were also destined for Amsterdam via OR Tambo International Airport.¹⁴

A farmworker stacks boxes of wine for sale at the Vergenoegd wine estate near Cape Town, South Africa, May 2016. In the case of State v Rodriquez, similar wine boxes arranged on pallets were used to conceal heroin.

SOURCE: © Gallo images

Empty wine bottles filled with illegal substances

Emptying wine bottles and filling them with drugs (such as liquid amphetamine) has a lower risk of seizure, drug traffickers believe, because the drugs are not visible without the use of police canine units and intrusive inspection methods.¹⁵

Three Germans and one Italian national, allegedly members of a drug smuggling syndicate operating in South Africa, were arrested in January 2015 after drugs valued at ZAR 500 000 (US$43 192) were found in their vehicle. Some of the drugs were in the form of liquid MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) concealed in wine bottles, which was believed to have been bottled in Amsterdam and then transported across the world disguised as champagne.¹⁶

A few months later, officials at OR Tambo International Airport discovered cocaine worth ZAR 2 million (US$138 729) in wine bottles.¹⁷ The bottles, wrapped in Christmas paper and marked as gifts, were destined for London. Upon inspection, it was discovered that the bottles were sealed with glue and the liquid was thicker than wine.¹⁸ Also at OR Tambo, 3.62 kilograms of cocaine, valued at just under ZAR 1 million (US$112 364),¹⁹ was found in three wine bottles in March 2013 after a customs dog reacted to the bottles during a search.²⁰

Officials in other countries – including Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia and Bolivia – have also found cocaine and amphetamines hidden in wine bottles.²¹ The Canada Border Services Agency has stated that smuggling drugs in wine bottles is a common tactic.²²

According to customs officials in Cape Town, there have been many instances where officials opened wine bottles and discovered that the viscosity of the liquid was different to that of alcohol.²³

Liquid amphetamine is usually thick and oily. However, even at this stage, officials cannot confirm the presence of drugs without testing, and traffickers are sometimes able to bribe officials or interfere with lab results.²⁴

Drugs can be dissolved in wine and later extracted

Drug traffickers with access to the required technical resources also dissolve drugs in wine. Usually, once the wine bottles reach their destination, technicians extract the drug from the alcohol and produce it in powdered or tablet form.²⁵

This method has become popular because standard scanners at ports and borders cannot detect drugs dissolved in alcohol. The magnetic resonance imaging machines used by hospitals can detect them, but not all ports and borders have access to this equipment.²⁶

Contraband can be smuggled in box wine

Box wine cartons have occasionally been used to smuggle drugs because they have a thin internal layer of lead foil that may interfere with scanning equipment ‘by creating a bounce back of the images making it unclear to determine the exact contents’.²⁷

This method, also popular amongst wildlife traffickers, has become less common as scanning equipment has advanced. Instead, small quantities of wildlife products and drugs have been placed in wine corks.²⁸

Wine consignments can be hijacked without the owner’s knowledge

During the Rodriquez trial, the owner of the Eerste Hoop wine estate testified that the smuggling plan had been orchestrated by Rodriquez without the knowledge of anyone at the estate; instead, Rodriquez attempted to hijack the legitimate wine shipment and take advantage of Eerste Hoop’s role as a regular wine exporter.

This form of hijacking of licit products being moved through customs is not unusual. According to interviews with customs officials and police officers in South Africa, a drug trafficker may locate a company that is well known by customs agents as a legitimate exporter, enter into apparently legitimate business transactions with the exporter, and use them to export items laced with drugs. In many instances, the exporter is unaware that their ‘stellar reputation with customs is being hijacked to smuggle drugs across the world’.²⁹

South Africa is the world’s 12th largest wine exporter and the leading producer in East and Southern Africa.³⁰ The primary markets for South African wine – European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands³¹ – are also key markets for drugs moved through South Africa. This, plus the numerous methods of smuggling through wine consignments outlined above, make South African wine exports an appealing target drug for traffickers.

Corrupt officials at the point of departure may also conceal drugs inside legitimate consignments of goods which are perceived to be commonplace and low-risk – such as wine and fruit – while corrupt officials at the point of arrival extract them. This may involve reopening sealed containers and positioning the drugs in an easily accessible location, which allows a corrupt official at the other end to easily access it before the container is sent for scanning.³² In such cases many exporters, importers and customers do not know that their goods were used to transport drugs.

Hijacking of licit products is not an issue unique to South African wine. In Kenya, for example, exports must be scanned before departure. However, tea, the country’s main export, is fast-tracked and exempted from scanning; instead, a customs official is present when the tea is loaded onto containers. Smugglers may bribe officials to place other items in the containers. This was discovered when more than 3 tonnes of ivory were found in Thailand, in a container marked ‘tea leaves’, after export from Kenya.³³ Similar strategies have also been used to export batteries illegally from Kenya to South East Asia (where lead is extracted from them) in containers labelled as carrying tea leaves.³⁴

Customs and law-enforcement agencies are learning to detect smuggling by means of wine consignments

Most drug seizures in the Western Cape are not made during routine searches but rather through risk profiling.³⁵ Customs officials undergo extensive training in profiling and targeting high-risk containers and items.

Since 2015, drug seizures have increased, and drug smugglers have become more wary of using wine consignments.³⁶ However, there is still room for improvement as criminals always seek out regulatory and capacity weaknesses to exploit. There appears to be a shift from wine to fruit as a means to smuggle drugs because fruit is considered low risk and is fast-tracked through customs due to its short shelf life.³⁷ Law-enforcement officials, however, are still paying close attention to wine consignments, because traffickers may abandon a particular method after a seizure to ‘allow the dust to settle … but they always come back to wine.’³⁸

Law-enforcement and customs officials will have to remain vigilant of wine consignments. It is still common for officials to seize drugs concealed in wine consignments, as in the case of State v Rodriquez. For East and Southern Africa more broadly, this case is indicative of how patterns of licit trade can be hijacked for smuggling contraband.

Notes