Cocaine weighing approximately 200kg at the federal police East Flanders station in Dendermonde in June 2021. Photograph: Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenCocaine weighing approximately 200kg at the federal police East Flanders station in Dendermonde in June 2021. Photograph: Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP/Getty ImagesAirbnbGangs using Airbnb-type rentals as drug stash houses, top Belgian official saysFlexible short-term bookings used to store and pack drugs and stash weapons and cash, says Ine Van WymerschJennifer Rankin in Brussels Tue 11 Aug 2026 09.47 CESTLast modified on Tue 11 Aug 2026 10.28 CESTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleAirbnb-type short-term rentals are being used as stash houses by criminal gangs for money, drugs, weapons and people, Belgium’s lead official in charge of countering drugs has said.The booming e-commerce sector is helping “enormously” to facilitate organised crime, Belgium’s national drug commissioner, Ine Van Wymersch, said.Authorities did not have a precise idea of the scale of the problem but criminals were taking advantage of the flexibility offered by short-term booking platforms, she told the Guardian.“You need someone to pick up a cargo from the harbour. You don’t know exactly when the boat will arrive. Well, you can hire an Airbnb apartment or studio for three days. It’s very flexible. If the boat is not coming to Antwerp but going to Marseille, there is free cancellation.”She said short-term rental companies had “a very good legal purpose” but needed to be more resilient to avoid abuse by criminals.View image in fullscreenAntwerp port, one of Europe’s main gateways for cocaine. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPAAt the beginning of August, police seized 3.3kg of cocaine and €4,845 (£4,140) in cash from an apartment rented on Airbnb in central Brussels, which was believed to have been used for storing and packing drugs, the news agency Belga reported. In 2024 when 11 people were sentenced for their role in a vast drug trafficking operation between Belgium and the UK, it was revealed that drugs worth €21m were seized from an Airbnb rental in Staden, West Flanders.A representative for Airbnb in Belgium declined to comment but directed the Guardian to recent remarks by Clément Eulry, Airbnb’s country manager for France and the Benelux.He told De Staandard that such criminal bookings represented an extreme minority among the millions the company processes annually. He said every case was one too many and the company undertook various measures, including using artificial intelligence to identify suspicious bookings. He said reports of problematic renters were always notified to police and local authorities.Short-term rentals are only one facet of the modern economy making life easier for organised crime.Van Wymersch cited the ease of setting up anonymous email accounts, encrypted communications, cryptocurrency and the ubiquity of parcel delivery. “The fact that e-commerce is booming business is facilitating enormously organised crime.”View image in fullscreenA 2019 seizure of heroin in Felixstowe in the UK. The seizure was made after British intelligence identified a container vessel suspected of carrying a large drugs shipment en route to Antwerp. Photograph: National Crime Agency/EPAShe said delivery firms were also “very at risk” of being instrumentalised by organised crime, because “it is not a suspicious situation any more when you see that there is a white van stopping at your neighbour’s house and … a small box handed over”.Van Wymersch became Belgium’s first-ever national drug commissioner in 2023 after Antwerp was firmly established as one of Europe’s main gateways for cocaine.Her appointment followed a wave of drug-fuelled violence and threats. In 2022 the then Belgian justice minister had to live under police protection after an alleged plot to kidnap him was uncovered. Antwerp endured a spate of grenade attacks and the fatal shooting of an 11-year old girl, the victim of a conflict between rival drug gangs.Last year an anonymous investigative judge – who was forced to live in a safe house for four months – warned that Belgium risked becoming a narco state in an excoriating critique of the government’s response.The narco state warning originated with Van Wymersch. She agreed, she said, with her earlier opinion that “if we don’t do anything, we are at risk to become a narco state … where you don’t know any more who are the good guys and who are the bad guys”.Her priority is going after criminal money: “This multi-headed monster only has one heart and that’s the money.”Her strategy means targeting small businesses – hairdressers, nail bars or night shops – used for laundering money. Her message to local authorities was that they needed to inspect and investigate “the dodgy shop” in their neighbourhood: “It matters because all these small businesses are one big network.”skip past newsletter promotionFree newsletter | WeeklySign up to This is EuropeThe most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environmentPreview latestEnter your email Sign upafter newsletter promotionShe said criminal gangs had changed their modus operandi, exploiting small business, rather than using the “big money-laundering constructions” of the past.Organised crime had morphed from top-down pyramid hierarchies bonded by trust into looser anonymous networks where criminals “don’t know to which network they are belonging any more”, she added.Illicit activities are outsourced to different gangs, who specialise in money laundering, procuring or using weapons. “It is really crime as a service and it’s very opportunistic,” she said.After a rapid rise through Belgium’s judicial system, Van Wymersch is known for articulating an “iceberg strategy” to combat organised drug crime.The shootings and explosions are the visible part of the iceberg, she said, while below the waterline are harms not always linked to organised
