Mexican Cartels Are Already Operating in Poland and Central Europe

A recipe for meth

The Sinaloa cartel has outposts on every continent except Antarctica. Sooner or later, it was bound to reach Poland.

For years, Mexicans have been smuggling cocaine into Europe, becoming more creative each year: not only in banana containers, but on ships transporting sick cattle, in shipments of clothing soaked with drugs, or in specially modified submarines. Most drugs enter through major ports in Hamburg, Rotterdam or Antwerp. Only 2 per cent of containers are inspected, so the risk of interception is low. Recently, new trends have emerged: cocaine also flows along African routes to ports in Italy, Spain and the Balkans. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon, the role of private planes transporting goods directly from South America and the Caribbean is growing.

The business is stable: in Europe, a kilogram of cocaine costs twice as much as in the US at around 39,000 euros, and the number of regular consumers keeps rising; today, there are more than 6 million users, twice as many as two decades ago. The market generates an estimated 11.6 billion euros annually.

“The market is saturated, competition is increasing and, as a result, violence is rising, which you can see on the streets of Belgian and French cities,” says a German investigator who wished to remain anonymous. “Now imagine you’re a decision-maker in a cartel. What do you do? Simple: you introduce a new, ‘better’ product and look for new markets.”

The “new” product – though not entirely new – is methamphetamine (which goes by the street name of meta in Poland). In 2023, EU member states reported 9,800 seizures totalling 1.8 tonnes. A year later, nearly twice as large a single shipment was confiscated in Rotterdam. In just one year, seizures of key precursors increased from 352 kilograms in 2022 to nearly 8 tonnes.

Until now, most meth in Central Europe came from Afghanistan (after the Taliban banned opium cultivation, production surged) and from “garage labs” in the Czech Republic, often set up by Vietnamese gangs, according to drugs expert Jindrich Voboril. On Polish markets, you could therefore buy Afghan meth or locally produced meth from the Polish-Czech-German border region.

“And suddenly Mexicans appeared in Europe. Meth produced by them is based on easily available precursors and is extremely strong, making it highly attractive,” says Vanda Felbab-Brown, an American expert on international organised crime.

She explains that the Sinaloa cartel has something local criminal groups lack: know-how and cocineros, or “cooks”, as chemists are called in Mexico. Between 2019 and 2020 alone, around 20 cocineros were arrested in Europe, having brought sophisticated meth production techniques to the continent. As a result, retail meth prices have steadily fallen, while the average purity has increased by 16 per cent over the past decade.

Laurent Laniel, director of the Office for Crime, Precursors and Drug Consumption at the European Union Agency for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EUDA), admits that the biggest change Mexican groups have introduced in European markets is the use of an innovative method for recycling by-products.

“Traditionally, methamphetamine synthesis produces two forms of the molecule: D-methamphetamine (the desired drug) and L-methamphetamine (the waste),” explains Laniel. “Previously, European producers discarded the L-form as unusable. Mexican chemists have developed a process that allows the L-form to be recycled back into a mixture from which the D-form can be recovered. Thanks to this process, producers are able to double the amount of drug obtained from the same amount of precursors. This is crucial, as precursors are controlled substances and difficult to obtain.”

These precursors mainly come from China. They are often shipped as so-called “subsidies”. These ‘disguised precursors’ (i.e., substances not on banned lists) are then converted in local laboratories into BMK, needed for methamphetamine production. As a result, the Mexican method allows for the production of very large crystals (up to 15 centimetres), which are perceived as luxury goods and command the highest prices.

“They’re like jewels for methamphetamine users,” Laniel smiles.

Yet like all jewels, they are expensive. “The cost of equipping a large advanced laboratory can be thousands of euros, and in the case of the largest facilities, even hundreds of thousands,” Laniel says. “Some laboratories were equipped with vapour filtration systems to avoid the characteristic odour, and special heat-blocking shields to prevent detection by police helicopter thermal imaging cameras.”

The cocineros mainly operate in Belgium and the Netherlands. For example, Dutch authorities tracked down a 40-year-old known as “Pablo Icecobar” – a nickname combining Pablo Escobar and “ice”, a street name for meth. He supplied cooks to at least four laboratories, including a “narco boat” lab on a vessel in Moerdijk.

The product was mainly destined for Western markets. But during the pandemic, cartels began exploring new ones. In 2020, authorities seized 1.5 tonnes in Croatia intended for the Slovak market. In May 2024, Spanish police intercepted another large shipment destined for German and Polish markets.

“Cartels have long had local cocaine distributors, so it was easier to enter new European markets with meth,” Felbab-Brown emphasises. “And production using the ‘Mexican method’ scales easily to industrial levels. Hence the boom in cooks among local gangs. It minimises logistical risk.”

‘Made in Poland’

There were four Mexicans staying at the rented villa on Polna Street in Orla. As well as the four bedrooms, the house had a sauna, a beach volleyball court, a hot tub in the yard – and one enormous stainless-steel vat, a thousand litres in capacity, which was manufactured and delivered by Polish contractors.

One of the men, 46-year-old J. from Los Mochis, previously sold seafood. He had arrived in Poland seven months earlier to find a location for a lab.

“Have you ever been convicted?” the judge asked at the first hearing held on November 19, 2025.

“No.”

“No? Let me rephrase – have you been in prison?”

“Yes, six years in the US. For drug trafficking.”

The second man W., four years younger, apparently handled the logistics. In his hometown of Culiacan, he ran a gym but fell into debt. Because of this, he was drawn into the trade and became “part of a larger chain of people”, as he told the court. His colleagues had no driving licences or credit cards, so he drove the car and did the grocery shopping.

Finally, two cooks: 50-year-old J., a mechanic from Durango, and 46-year-old F., a trained lawyer from Culiacan, handled production. Next to the outdoor jacuzzi they set up equipment, barrels and the huge vat.

“They were looking for airflow,” explains David Saucedo, a Mexican cartel analyst. “Labs are often set up outdoors so toxic fumes don’t kill the chemists. If they’d had air conditioning or a fan, they probably would have worked in the living room or kitchen.”

In three weeks, the Orla narcos produced 118.5 litres of methamphetamine. They were waiting for precursor deliveries when Polish police raided the property on September 4, 2024.

“Bags of caustic soda were lying all over the yard,” recounts village head Chmielewski, who entered the site with the officers. “When I saw them, I smiled to myself – the ‘Now Poland’ [Teraz Polska] quality marks jumped out at me immediately.”

A broader trend

In the succeeding months after the arrest of these four men in Orla, the Polish authorities dismantled two more laboratories staffed by Mexicans. In February 2025, the roof of a warehouse in Maksymilianowo near Bydgoszcz caught fire. During demolition, firefighters discovered foul-smelling chemical substances in trays. It turned out meth had been produced there.

Seven months later, on September 4, 2025, officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBSP), supported by counterterrorism units and a helicopter, entered a laboratory hidden on a farm near Swiecie. They secured 300 litres and 3 tonnes of chemicals used in drug synthesis hidden in a barn.

“All detained Mexican citizens came specifically to produce methamphetamine,” says Michal Aleksandrowicz, head of the department combating organised drug crime at CBSP. “They used production methods known to cartels. Identical laboratories exist virtually all over the world. We observe that some cartel cells are sent to different regions of Europe. Where there is demand, they produce.”

The CBSP operation near Swiecie benefitted from international experience. “Helicopters? You never know what awaits you in such a lab. Criminals use traps, because the laboratory has value. That’s why we followed the example of Colombian services, who use helicopters to dismantle labs,” explains Aleksandrowicz, who completed anti-narco training in jungle training centres in southern Colombia.

Across three cases, eight Mexican citizens were detained in total. All evidence leads back to the Sinaloa cartel. The Podlaskie narcos pleaded guilty at the very first hearing in Bialystok. One admitted they were acting on orders from the Sinaloa cartel and feared retaliation from their superiors. They claimed the drugs were to be produced for a Polish criminal and for the Polish market. They were to receive 1,000 dollars per month. Payment for the finished product (about 500 dollars per kilogram) was to be transferred to relatives in Mexico.

“This is further proof that Mexican cartels are trying to expand and develop markets in Europe,” says the expert Felbab-Brown.

“These are not one-off actions,” agrees Dr Robert Bunker, a former international security and counterterrorism specialist at the US Army War College, now working for the consultancy C/O Futures. “This is a coordinated plan at higher cartel levels, as part of some form of agreement with organised crime in Europe.”

According to Ludmila Quiros from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, we are currently witnessing a “transfer of knowledge and syndicate members to Northern Europe”.

If you look at the methamphetamine map of the European continent, production is clearly shifting towards Central and Eastern Europe. Of the seven EU countries that dismantled a total of 250 meth labs in 2023, five are located in the region: Czech Republic (189), Germany (5), Austria (1), Poland (5) and Bulgaria (18).

“Cartels have been operating in Poland for roughly four years,” says David Saucedo, an expert on Mexican organised crime. “Poland, with its extensive rural areas, is not only an excellent country for hiding production but also for drug transit – both to Western Europe and further east.”

Aleksandrowicz of CBSP also believes the Mexican criminals arrested were producing drugs mainly for Western Europe rather than Poland. “Our market is dominated by mephedrone and clephedrone. Price also matters – methamphetamine isn’t particularly cheap by Polish standards. What we do observe is that large quantities of meth precursors are heading to Ukraine.”

As production grows, so does consumption in the region. Wastewater analyses in European cities have shown increasing levels of meth residues in Dresden, Chemnitz, Magdeburg and Vienna. The substance was detected in 66 per cent of tested syringes in Prague, and wastewater in Ostrava recorded the highest per-capita trace levels in the country: 914 milligrams per 1,000 people per day – twice as much as before the pandemic. The high Czech figures may result from “local production”, say experts.

The latest EUDA data available, for 2023, shows that amphetamine clients accounted for at least 10 per cent of first-time treatment entrants in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Finland and Sweden. In Czechia, Slovakia and Turkey, over 30 per cent of first-time clients entered treatment for problems related to meth.

Cook for hire

I introduced myself to a Mexican cook over the phone as “someone from the industry” who was interested in setting up a laboratory in Poland. A well-connected person from Mexico vouched for me.

“Hello, I’m calling from Poland.”

“That’s somewhere near Romania? I know people there,” replied the cocinero.

“I thought Jalisco people operate in Romania,” I bait him, recalling that in 2021 Carlos Ruben Ramirez from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was arrested there.

“Jalisco has interests in Bulgaria.”

This cook from Mexico hides his real name. He is 38 years old and has been “cooking” for over a decade. He’s never dealt with fentanyl, but meth is his bread and butter. He currently lives in the Mexican city of Durango. He connects with me via Signal and shows a downpour on video: people sheltering under roofs, drivers honking, himself sitting at a plastic table under an umbrella.

An ashtray flashes on screen, a pack of red Marlboros. He makes sure not to show his face. He admits that he once worked in a lab “somewhere in Germany”. He earned 8,000 dollars net then, but complains that prices have since fallen. In his view, it’s the “fault of Balkan gangs cooperating with Colombians”, which brought South American cooks onto the market. Indeed, the Albanian media reported that in 2024 cooks from Colombia and Venezuela were caught working in a lab in Qerek, north of Tirana.

“And if I wanted to set up a lab and hire you?” I probe.

“Do you know people?” he reins me in.

“I know you – isn’t that enough?”

“That’s not enough.”

“What budget do I need?”

“Easy. Not so fast. I’m just a cook. I just carry out orders. From my bosses – and the Albanians.”

The expert Felbab-Brown is not surprised by the conversation: “It’s not like someone randomly decides: ‘Hey, I’ll sell my skills in Poland.’ There is always an organisation behind the cooks. They receive instructions and permission from headquarters. They are the starting point for broader cooperation with local gangs. We’ll give you cooks, and in return we get a distribution network.”

To understand the modus operandi of cartels in Europe, BIRN spoke with several Mexican contacts over a period of six months.

A Sinaloa member responsible for “European operations”, using a Russian name, recounted that he does business with the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta and knows the “right people” in Monaco and Marseille. We corresponded for weeks, spoke several times by phone. We were supposed to meet in Madrid, but he cancelled at the last moment – he had to oversee some business in Cordoba in Spain. He stopped responding when I refused to pay 1,000 euros for information.

The second contact was an informant from Culiacan who helped us investigate the smuggling of oxycodone tablets laced with fentanyl from Mexico to Europe. The third was a well-informed Mexican cartel expert who requested anonymity.

A striking picture which emerged from these conversations is that cooks operate exclusively on cartel orders. They are sent to Europe, where they can earn far more than at home. Felbab-Brown illustrates this point using the example of sicarios – contract killers from Colombia or Mexico. In Europe they can earn 33,000-76,000 dollars per job, while an average sicario in Mexico earns just 200 dollars.

Usually – though not always – a cook’s stay in a lab lasts for three months, equivalent to a Schengen tourist visa. This limits the risk of arrest. They are then replaced by others. The product goes to Western Europe, but sometimes also to what one informant calls the “hot” market of Australia and Oceania – a fact confirmed by EMCDDA, Europol and US Drug Enforcement Administration reports, which identify Europe as an increasingly popular distribution route to the lucrative Oceania market.

Imagine the cartel as a large corporation with external branches supervising operations. The R&D department – responsible for “experiments”, as one source put it – is outsourced. According to Mexican sources, this role is filled by “people from the Balkans”.

“They have local contacts and semi-finished products, but they need knowledge – cooks. That’s the capital the cartel brings to the arrangement,” one of the sources tells BIRN.

“There are two brains behind such operations [with one] in Mexico, ensuring quality, discipline and loyalty of cooks through carrot and stick. The carrot is the chance to get rich; the stick is keeping an eye on the cook’s relatives,” says another source.

Laniel of EUDA admits that criminal groups from the Balkans often act as brokers, combining Mexican chemical expertise with local infrastructure and financing. He cites the example of Spain, where cartels exploited local residents for logistics, renting isolated locations and equipping them with filtration systems.

Balkans at the top of the pyramid

The so-called Balkan cartel – comprising Albanian and Serbian mafias – is today the world’s largest distributor of cocaine.

Between 2018 and 2020, among those arrested for cocaine trafficking in Europe, the largest group (266 people) were Albanian citizens. Europol’s Sky ECC operation, targeting encrypted criminal communications, showed that Albanian was the second most-used language after English in intercepted messages.

This expansion was made possible by the Sinaloa cartel. Balkan criminals initially sold drugs shipped from Mexico to Europe. They eventually took control of ports, established new routes, and built logistics hubs – even in Africa. Today, over 70 per cent of the world’s cocaine passes through Ecuador, and Balkan criminals are present in key ports like Guayaquil.

“In Sinaloa’s operations in France, Belgium or Spain, we see a pattern. The local partner not only brings in cooks, provides protection and sells meth on the street – they often also handle money laundering,” says Dr Bunker.

A German expert confirms this: “You have to look at the bigger picture. Drugs are relatively easy to produce and sell. Laundering money is harder. That requires Balkan specialists with strong connections in Turkey and Dubai. They launder money using, among other methods, the Chinese fei ch’ien system.”

Evidence of this cooperation appears in a US federal intelligence report revealing that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, one of Sinaloa’s top leaders, forged alliances with the Albanian mafia – specifically brothers Arben, Fatos and Ramiz Hysa. They laundered millions from illegal real estate and tourism investments on the Balkan coast, using shell companies based in Europe. One sanctioned company on the list was Rosetta Gaming, registered in the Polish city of Krakow.

“For years, I’ve warned European law enforcement that the key to success is stopping the expansion of synthetic drugs. Today, besides Mexican groups, the main players trying to create a mass market are Balkan groups. The crime map of Europe is fluid and constantly changing – and violence is increasing,” says Felbab-Brown.

“If we look at the Netherlands, the local police say they don’t find as many Mexicans. Why? Because the Dutch learned the Mexican method,” says Laniel of EUDA. “It goes like this: ‘Thank you, Mexicans, you have your money, you taught us, now we don’t need you, we’ll do it ourselves.’ This could be one scenario for Poland. When chemists from local criminal groups learn this, they will no longer need Mexican cocineros. That’s why it’s so important to dismantle such groups and laboratories at the very beginning, before knowledge is transferred.”

Aleksandrowicz of CBSP cautions that, “at this moment, we don’t see Mexican cartels planning further activity in Poland. There was a big boom, but they seem to have learned that producing synthetic drugs in Poland isn’t that easy.”

However, a Sinaloa-linked source says the attraction of Europe remains: “Business risk in Europe is minimal. There’s no shortage of cooks in Mexico. If they go to Europe, Africa or Asia and get caught, others replace them. And the profit potential is enormous – counted in the millions of dollars.”