Belgium’s violent drug gangs are swiftly gaining power

Some viewers turned their heads away when the judge set the video playing. On the screen in the courtroom in the small Belgian town of Turnhout, a man with a red beard and bald head could be seen shouting fanatically into his smartphone: «Cut off his finger. Come on, chop, chop. Full speed ahead. Cut the boy’s finger off.»

The man’s name was Yersen V., and he was now 38 years old. On this Wednesday in May 2024, he was sitting in the courtroom with his eyes downcast. Even he no longer wanted to see what he had ordered over his mobile phone in February 2023.

«Brother, make sure that looks good on camera. Wahahahaha, that’s some real plastic surgery.»

Today, V. was wearing handcuffs and a Nike tracksuit. A drug boss in casual clothes. A year ago, however, he was still sitting in his villa in Marbella, Spain. From there, he shouted his orders into his cellphone and sent them via video call to a dark warehouse on the outskirts of Antwerp, Belgium.

«Now we’re going to hear a pig squeal. Hehehehehe.»

The video, playing on the courthouse screen, showed a naked man sitting on the floor of this warehouse, moaning and screaming. He was covered in blood, his hands tied behind his back. Several men were standing around him. One of them was capturing the moment for their boss in Marbella: how the others carved the word «thief» into their victim’s forehead, how they poured ammonia into his wounds, how they beat him and kicked him – and how they ended up by cutting off his little finger.

The video call lasted 13 minutes. At the end, V. said: «There, you see what happens when you steal from me.»

The cruelty of the scene seemed almost surreal, like something out of an episode of the Netflix series «Narcos.» Or like something from a war between drug gangs in faraway South America.

But this wasn’t Netflix. And it didn’t happen far away, but rather in the supposedly peaceful heart of the European Union. When people think about Belgium, cliches like waffles, fries and bad weather tend to spring to mind. But torture?

This country has a dark side. And this dark side has a name: cocaine. Last year, authorities here seized a record 116 tons of the drug. This makes the port of Antwerp Europe’s top cocaine hub, ahead of Rotterdam or Hamburg. Experts estimate that cartels smuggle up to 1,000 tons of the drug into the country every year.

One thousand tons. That’s enough to generate revenues of approximately 50 billion euros.

Belgium has become Europe’s center for cocaine distribution – and is consequently increasingly suffering from the violence of the drug cartels. It is today a country where the minister of justice was almost kidnapped, and where journalists, lawyers and police officers are risking their lives to do their jobs. Belgium is a country in which the population of the largest port city is being terrorized by grenade attacks, gunfire and kidnappings.

How did it come to this? Is Belgium on its way to becoming a narco-state, where drug mafias reach routinely into the corridors of power and torture is the order of the day?

---

1. The torture

In the courtroom in Turnhout, it slowly became clear why the 37-year-old man had ended up on the concrete floor of that warehouse in Antwerp. He had been accused of stealing 75 kilograms of cocaine from Yersen V. Among drug traffickers, mere suspicion of theft is enough to justify a person’s torture and mutilation. It is even enough reason to kill him in the end. The public prosecutor’s office believes that this was probably the plan in this case too.

After the ordeal in the warehouse, the torturers dragged their badly injured victim into a white Peugeot Boxer. Their mission: to take the man across the nearby border to the Netherlands and shoot him there, in no man’s land. This would have made it more difficult to solve the murder later.

Two states, two investigating authorities, one big mess.

But it didn’t work out that way. A breakdown saved the man’s life. An oil filter on the white Peugeot failed, and the car stopped moving. Instead of killing him, his kidnappers abandoned the man in the Belgian countryside.

The next day, a municipal worker on a nearby forest road met a man staggering toward him, covered in blood and missing a finger.

The emergency services later found the finger in the man’s jacket pocket.

The court ultimately sentenced Yersen V. to 17 years in prison. However, he was acquitted of the charge of attempted murder – for lack of evidence.

The case caused a stir in Belgium because of its cruelty, but there was no massive public outcry. The drug gangs’ violence has become too much a part of normal life.

One of the journalists in Turnhout’s historic courtroom was Patrick Lefelon, a police reporter in his mid-fifties. Lefelon writes for Het Laatste Nieuws, the country’s largest newspaper. Its name means «the latest news.» Afterward, he headlined his story: «Court in shock as horror video is shown.»

The reporter knows from his own experience what it feels like to be targeted by the drug mafia.

---

2. The misjudgment

Lefelon has been a journalist for more than 30 years. Few have followed the rise of the drug cartels in Belgium as closely as this police reporter from Antwerp.

Over a beer in his favorite bar in the city, he explains how his country got to this point. «Sometimes I have to laugh when I read the headlines from the past,» the reporter says.

The archives are full of sensational reports such as: «Ten kilos of cocaine confiscated! A huge success for the police!» he says. He shakes his head in disbelief. «Today, a confiscated ton is worth a paragraph at most.»

The street value of a ton of cocaine is 50 million euros. This is worth no more than a paragraph?

Twenty years ago it was different. At that time, people visited Antwerp from France to buy large quantities of marijuana, Lefelon remembers. He laughs. «That used to be our drug problem,» he says.

But then came the cocaine. It arrived with the exotic fruits. Unlike Rotterdam, the port of Antwerp has a terminal used for shipments of fruit from Central and South America. From Colombia, for example, or Mexico. But these mangoes, papayas and avocados come from the same areas as the coveted white powder.

«This terminal served as the gateway for cocaine,» Lefelon says. In those days, it was generally hidden between banana boxes, a method of smuggling still in use today. In the beginning, hardly anyone was interested in the drug, Lefelon says. Not even the police. «They were more focused on thefts inside the port, and on smuggled cigarettes and other drugs,» he notes.

This proved to be a mistake, because it allowed the cocaine mafia to grow quickly. Today, the war on drugs is devouring massive amounts of resources. A quarter of all cases occupying the police and the public prosecutor’s office center on drug-related crime. «It’s an incredible number,» the reporter says.

Nevertheless, the cartels are stronger, more self-confident and more ruthless than ever before. Nothing illustrates this better than the plans to kidnap Belgian Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne in the fall of 2022.

Investigators discovered a car stocked with firearms, cable ties and gasoline just 100 meters from his home. The minister had to spend a week in a safe house – a secret, guarded location.

In an interview with The Brussels Times newspaper, Van Quickenborne later said: «We have reached a new phase of narco-terrorism in our country.» He further said he believed it would get worse, with more tragedies likely to follow.

Only a small proportion of the crimes committed by the drug mafia reach the public eye. Most of them take place in secret. For example, the police estimate that nine out of 10 kidnappings go unreported because neither the perpetrator nor the victim is interested in going to the authorities.

It is only by chance that cases like that of Yersen V. come to light. In this instance, it was due to an unforeseen car breakdown. And the perpetrators’ careless handling of their cellphones, on which the investigators later discovered the torture video.

Discoveries like these offer a glimpse into the brutality of the drug trafficking milieu. Lefelon says that the police recently arrested two men in a delivery van. A dentist’s chair had been mounted in the cargo area. «That was a regular torture van,» he says.

The incident calls to mind similar images from the Netherlands. There, police discovered several soundproofed shipping containers containing torture chairs, handcuffs, pliers and scalpels. Torture chambers of this kind were also discovered later in Belgium.

---

3. The threatened reporter

Abuse, kidnapping, murder: Patrick Lefelon talks about these dangers as if they were all normal. Yet eventually there came a time that shattered even this experienced reporter’s aplomb. It all began on a Friday evening at the end of May 2021.

Lefelon tells it like this: «A police officer called me and said: ‹Mr. Lefelon, we have information that there are people in the drug scene who are not very happy about your articles. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, a car, a guy, a phone call, call us anytime and we’ll come.›»

The reporter kept his calm. He figured that as a journalist, it was inevitable that he would sometimes make people angry. He knew criminals weren’t about to thank him for exposing their crimes. He put the story out of his mind – until the same police officer called again four days later. «He asked: ‹Mr. Lefelon, where are you?› I told him: ‹I just got home.› And he said: ‹OK, stay there and put together a suitcase for two or three nights. We have to pick you up and take you to a safe place.›»

Two hours later, the reporter was sitting in a police office. An investigator told him the issue was a series of articles that his newspaper was planning – about Antwerp’s biggest drug bosses. «Nothing special,» Lefelon says. «It was the same as always. You take the last 20 articles and make a new one out of them.»

But one drug boss in particular didn’t seem to like the idea. In an encrypted chat, which the authorities had been able to crack, the criminal allegedly wrote: «Have you seen what Het Laatste Nieuws is doing? A series about drug bosses. In the next one they’ll be writing about me. Find out where this journalist lives. We have to do something about it. We have to stop him.»

As a result, Lefelon had to move into a safe house. The police officers told him he couldn’t take a smartphone or laptop with him. His only connection to the outside world, to his family, was a push-button cellphone with a new number. Every few days he had to change locations again.

This exceptional situation lasted about two weeks. Lefelon was then allowed to return home. According to the authorities, the danger had passed.

---

4. The threat from the Netherlands

At least in Europe, when the topic turns to journalists, lawyers and police officers who are afraid for their lives, people often think of the Netherlands. In Belgium’s northern neighbor, many residents have been living under police protection for years due to drug mafia threats.

One person who always rejected such protection was Peter R. de Vries, a Dutch investigative journalist, even though a drug boss was known to want him dead. On July 6, 2021 he was shot and killed in Amsterdam’s city center.

In Belgium, people look worriedly toward the Netherlands. Although conditions here are not yet as bad as to the north, the early signs are all in place: threats to press freedom and incidents of intimidation, torture and murder. Some public safety professionals predict that in five years’ time, Belgium will have become like the Netherlands is today.

The criminals active to the north already exert broad influence within Belgium. Most of the cocaine that arrives in Antwerp crosses the border to the Netherlands, where it is packaged and sent on through the distribution networks.

Another aspect of this underground activity is also affecting Belgium. In the suburbs of large Dutch cities, drug gangs are steadily recruiting young people under 18. One of them claims: Give them 500 euros, and they’ll do anything.

Belgium’s narcos also like to use these child soldiers.

On behalf of the cartels, they break into locked facilities at the port of Antwerp and retrieve cocaine from containers. They kidnap people and torture them in their employers’ name. They even kill if this is required. They shoot at houses with Kalashnikovs, and throw grenades at the front doors of people they want to intimidate.

If the police catch them, they face few consequences, as they are prosecuted under juvenile criminal law. Some are sent to juvenile detention facilities. Others receive alternative sentences that involve no more than family therapy or community service.

However, their influence has been felt throughout the city of Antwerp. The local Gazet van Antwerpen newspaper recently published an article with a map showing all the places in the city where members of the drug cartels have shot or killed people, or where they have set off explosives. In some neighborhoods, the underlying map is no longer visible because of all the dots.

Visiting these locations is a journey between crime scenes.

---

5. The macabre city tour

Merksem is a working-class district in the northwest of Antwerp. With its wide bicycle paths and small brick houses, it offers a cheerful impression. But on Jan. 9, 2023, a murder took place in front of one of these buildings.

A pair of Dutch juveniles hired by a drug gang drove down the street and shot out the window at the white garage door of the red house. It was meant to be a warning to a family involved in the drug business.

But behind the garage door was an 11-year-old girl. A victim of chance. She later died in the hospital.

A quick look around Merksem shows that some of the houses have been equipped with surveillance cameras. In the past, residents wanted to protect themselves from the drug gangs. Today, just the opposite is the case, says one expert on the local crime underground. Now the cameras are an indication that criminals involved in the drug business are living in these houses, and that they want to protect themselves from attacks by the competition.

Something similar can be seen in the neighboring Borgerhout district. Many people with roots in Morocco or other North African countries live here. The map published by the Gazet van Antwerpen shows a large number of attacks in this neighborhood in a very small area. Here is just a small selection:

Van Cortbeemdelei: Execution in the open street.

Maréestraat: Facade shot at.

Zegepraalstraat: Shooting.

Ledeganckstraat: Arson attack.

Betogingstraat: Explosion.

Verlindenstraat: Hand grenade.

Vaderlandstraat: Arson attack.

Today, few traces of these past attacks remain visible. Most of the facades have been repaired. In only a few places does closer inspection reveal bullet holes that have been inexpertly repaired with mortar.

The attacks sometimes impact bystanders too. One elderly woman was almost hit by a passing bullet while she was sitting in her living room, for example. The facade of another 93-year-old widow’s house was mistakenly destroyed by an explosive device.

In most cases, however, the people affected are themselves involved in the drug trade. When another bang is heard in the neighborhood, many people shrug their shoulders and say to themselves: It’s their own fault. Why do they get involved with the cartels?

But it isn’t that simple. Many of the people living in the affected neighborhoods are port workers – port workers who at some point were corrupted by the cocaine cartels’ agents. These insiders are of great value to the cartels, in contrast to the easily replaceable child soldiers from the Netherlands. This is because port workers can make whole containers full of cocaine disappear.

The cocaine mafia therefore uses recruiters to target them. These agents are well-informed, and they know who is likely to be susceptible. For example, this may be people who urgently need money, and who are working the unpopular but better-paid night shifts. Or people who have told their colleagues that they’ve always wanted to buy a boat. Or people who use a lot of cocaine themselves.

In such cases, the recruiters offer them money, drugs or a boat. A nice boat. The sums promised are considerable. Port employees can earn up to 400,000 euros for half an hour of dirty work, or sometimes just for looking away at the right moment.

At first, the recruiters are nothing if not agreeable. For example, if a port employee is separating from his wife, they will pay for a good divorce lawyer for him – if he makes a container disappear for them.

If this approach proves unsuccessful, the recruiter will switch to tougher tactics such as thinly veiled threats. In a conversation, he may casually drop the name of the port worker’s daughter, along with the place where she goes to school.

Port employees who at some point give in are lost. They become trapped in a system that delivers what it promises – the money for the divorce lawyer, for example – but from which there is no escape. If they refuse further services, a bomb may go off at their front door, or a car may drive past their house and shower it with bullets.

But why can’t the cartels’ activities at the port of Antwerp be stopped?

---

6. Colombia in Europe

A bridge on the outskirts of Antwerp offers a clear view of the port. From a distance, the facility looks like a titan’s playground, with huge cranes offloading containers from the ships in slow motion. In between are the docks themselves. At a speed no faster than a walk, huge cargo ships glide along the branching waterways until they arrive at their assigned terminals.

In the background, two cooling towers of a nuclear power plant are steaming away, and here and there a few wind turbines are visible, their rotor blades turning in leisurely circles as behind them the landscape disappears into the Antwerp haze.

This port is larger than the city of Zurich. Every year, around 20,000 ships arrive here, bringing over 12 million containers from all over the world – an average of one every three seconds. In this chaos of cranes, ships and trucks, how is anyone supposed to pick out the containers that are carrying illegal cargo?

The person tasked with overseeing this job is Kristian Vanderwaeren. Vanderwaeren is director general of Belgium’s customs service, and therefore something like the chief guard at Europe’s cocaine gateway. Vanderwaeren explains how the cartels try to get past his people: by hiding the drug behind banana boxes, for example. Or hiding it inside double container walls. Sometimes even by turning it into liquid form and spraying it onto clothes.

Vanderwaeren’s team uses scanners to get around such tricks. He says this has been consistently successful. But that is precisely when his employees need to be particularly careful, he adds. Because gangs sometimes try to retrieve the shipments that have been confiscated.

«We once confiscated 40 tons of cocaine in one month. My people were taking inventory when several men with Kalashnikovs attacked them,» Vanderwaeren says. The customs officers managed to call the police, and the threat was averted. But this was only the first of three attempts by the criminals to retrieve the drugs.

On the second attempt, the police were able to stop the attackers at the terminal. «And the third time, I asked the government for support,» Vanderwaeren says. «Since then, the military has been helping us in addition to the police.»

In that case, it turned out that the drug gang had hidden tracking devices inside their cargo. «Since then, we’ve been looking out for transmitters like this in every shipment,» Vanderwaeren says.

Police and military forces serving as protection for customs officers? It sounds like something out of a bad movie. «That’s right,» says Vanderwaeren. «These are scenes like in Latin America. We’re not really used to this in Europe. And it’s not just gunfights we have to be prepared for – we have to be ready for kidnappings too.»

His team is facing weapons that are normally used only in war. Sometimes gang agents try to bribe them, just like the port workers. Four customs officers were recently involved in a corruption case. But this is quite a small number relative to the 3,000 customs officers scattered around Belgium, Vanderwaeren says. «We’ve been very lucky so far.»

Belgium is not yet a narco-state, the customs director general says. «But we have to be very careful. Otherwise that’s exactly what will happen.»

But can this future still be averted? Vanderwaeren wonders the same thing. After all, there is more demand for cocaine today than ever before. The drug isn’t only being consumed by ravers in Zurich and Berlin. Or by bankers in London and Frankfurt.

The teacher from central Switzerland is also putting it up her nose, and so is the construction worker from Ticino, and even people who obsess over making sure that every protein bar they eat is organic, vegan, gluten-free and contains as little palm oil as possible. Everyone makes an exception for cocaine, a drug soaked in blood. And thanks to the huge supplies available in Switzerland, a line costs less than a cocktail.

It is this dynamic that makes the rise of the drug mafia seemingly unstoppable. On March 9, 2021, the world saw just how difficult any kind of crackdown has become. Something happened then that had the potential to shake up the entire industry.

---

7. The bosses’ lawyer

John Maes’ law firm is located on the eighth floor of an elegant office building in central Antwerp. This is not the place to go if you have problems with your rental deposit. Hiring this law firm’s services requires serious money.

A picture of a cargo ship hangs on the wall in the glass-fronted meeting room. The ship is carrying scores of colorful containers, and the letters MSC, referencing the Switzerland-based shipping giant, are inscribed on its bow. «Not my clients,» Maes says as he enters the room. «But many of my clients are interested in this picture,» he says with a grin. «They’re asking themselves: Where would be the best place to hide drugs there?»

It’s an ironic joke that shows just how accustomed people in Belgium have become to the presence of cocaine-smuggling gangs.

Maes is one of Antwerp’s top attorneys. Many of Belgium’s narcos come to him when they have problems with the law. Cocaine barons as clients? Maes replies: «If you’re a lawyer in this city, you can’t avoid drug-related crime becoming part of your practice.» After all, in a state based on the rule of law, everyone is entitled to a defense attorney. Even the dreaded drug bosses.

Maes tells the story of one of the most memorable days he has experienced as a lawyer, on March 9, 2021. This was the day when the authorities suddenly began to believe they could actually defeat the drug mafia.

«I was on my way to Bruges when my phone rang. A client was on the line and said: ‹The police were just at my place. Said they wanted to search the house. But they were only interested in my smartphone.›» Maes was annoyed. House searches are typically more comprehensive. «Five minutes later, the next client called – and said exactly the same thing,» he says.

In the end, he had 15 clients with the same story. And Maes hadn’t even arrived in Bruges yet. «I asked myself: What the hell is going on?» The lawyer suspected that something big was underway.

In fact, the day Maes is referencing marked the beginning of a crackdown of unprecedented success. European police authorities had managed to crack the Sky ECC encrypted messaging service, which at the time served as something like a WhatsApp for criminals.

This service was very popular in the underworld. This was where drug dealers, port workers, criminal families and corrupt lawyers from all over the world exchanged information – about drug shipments, go-betweens and even murder contracts.

Because the messaging service used modified cellphones with built-in encryption, the criminals felt safe. They were so confident that they even exchanged selfies of themselves standing in their homes or in front of large shipments of cocaine.

And now everything that was meant to stay hidden was lying open on the investigators’ tables: 500 million chat messages from 70,000 users – including transportation routes, warehouses and pictures of people being tortured.

Maes immediately felt the effects of this hack. «On that day, when all I wanted was to get to Bruges, a new dynamic began,» the lawyer says. «We were confronted with a mass of evidence that we could never have imagined.» Client after client was arrested. The prisons were filled beyond capacity. Maes says: «If the police could have doubled the number of investigators, they would have had to process twice as many cases.»

It was the most severe blow ever struck against the organized drug mafia. The amassed evidence was overwhelming. Authorities were correspondingly euphoric. At last there was a way to take action against the big bosses, not just against small-time dealers or easy-to-replace middlemen. Finally the heads of the crime networks could be eliminated, in the process doing massive damage to the international cocaine trade.

For their part, the lawyers too now saw what their clients had really been up to. There was panic among the narcos. Those who were not yet in prison tried to flee to other countries, to Turkey or Dubai.

And the authorities? For the first time, they could see just how far the drug mafia’s tentacles had already spread throughout society – and not just in Belgium, but across Europe.

They also saw that Europe’ drug bosses were not Pablo Escobars. Unlike Colombia’s famous drug lord, they were not running strictly hierarchical organizations or reveling in their ability to terrorize entire states.

Rather, today’s cocaine trade involves wide-ranging cooperation. As one insider puts it: «If you order a ton together from South America, you can share the transportation costs. That’s cheaper for everyone.»

Maes says he too was shocked by the extent of the international drug trafficking. Photos of unimaginable amounts of money had appeared in the intercepted chats. «There were tables standing around heaped with bills. Twenty million euros in cash,» he remembers.

He says he had clients who couldn’t even figure out what do with all the money. He tells the story of one incident when the police searched a house: «When they opened the doors of the kitchen cupboards, bundles of money worth millions fell out on their heads.»

But there was also shocking content in the chat logs. «We saw kidnapping plans, murder contracts, photos of torture.» Maes says today: «There are not enough police officers to bring all these criminals to justice.»

Nevertheless, «Operation Sky,» as the Sky ECC hack was called, reached unprecedented proportions. In Belgium alone, the police arrested almost 900 people.

But then something unexpected happened. The investigators detained thousands of criminals in numerous countries. They confiscated staggering sums of money and destroyed tons of drugs. And yet it had no effect on the drug market.

The price of cocaine remained as low as before, and the drugs found on the street retained the same high level of purity. The supply of cocaine simply continued as if nothing had happened.

The massive strike against organized crime turned out to be little more than a slap in the face. This unprecedented success in the fight against drug-related crime proved to be nothing more than a fleeting knock in the engine of the international cocaine trade.

How could this be?

The lawyer’s answer is simple: money. The cocaine business is the criminals’ most lucrative activity. It is more profitable than trafficking in arms or humans, more profitable than any other drug. It doesn’t matter how influential a narco boss is, or how many contacts he has. If he is arrested, the next one will immediately step in – and the business will continue as before.

There is simply too much money at stake.

What worries the authorities even more is that organized crime has spread almost unnoticed from the underground into the heart of society. It is no longer to be found only in dark alleys, where dealers sell a few grams of cocaine at a time.

Maes tells the story of a Porsche event he recently attended, where he had been invited to look at the automaker’s new cars. At one point, he glanced over at the next table. «Several people waved at me. I realized: Those are clients of mine,» he says. In this case, when he says clients, he means Belgian drug dealers. Who were also Porsche customers. «The parallel world builds bridges into our world so quickly,» he says.

These connections can’t be seen at first glance, Maes stresses. People like his clients are personable, «nice guys,» entrepreneurs, he says. But they are entrepreneurs in a truly reprehensible business. «Because one thing stays the same. No matter how they present themselves, they are and remain drug dealers.»

---

8. The unequal battle

John Maes’ introduction to the underworld offers an object lesson in just how closely this world is connected to our world. It shows a country that has been unable to budge the drug mafia even with its hardest blow yet.

This is an unequal battle. An extensively armed global network against a state with limited resources.

At the port of Antwerp, on a much too cool morning in May, this inequality takes visible form. Belgian Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt gets out of an armored BMW, and strides toward a group of 70 police officers. Along with Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, he stops in front of a ragged rectangle of neon orange fluorescent vests.

The assembled officers offer the distinguished visitor from Brussels an awkward greeting. They are new to their job, and are being sworn in that day to fight the drug gangs at the port. They are meant to reinforce the security guards and customs officers who are already stationed here.

Two federal ministers in front of 70 police officers.

The politicians mean to convey a confident image, along the lines of: We are watching. We are providing reinforcements in the fight against cocaine trafficking at the port.

What onlookers see is less reassuring: just 70 new police officers for an area that stretches across 130 square kilometers.

Later, Van Tigchelt notes that the cartels can earn as much as 5 billion euros with just 100 tons of cocaine. This is more than the combined budget of the police and judicial authorities in all of Belgium, he adds. «So this is the enemy we are facing,» he says.

Can such a fight ever be won? «No,» the minister of justice says. «We will never win the fight. But I am convinced that we can break the back of organized crime.»

The fight is unwinnable. So keep fighting.

Belgium is not today a narco-state. But the country is a warning – to Switzerland, to Europe at large. It would be a mistake to underestimate the spread of the cartels. Because they are already here, in our midst.

Latest articles

Global reporting. Swiss-quality journalism.

In today’s increasingly polarized media market, the Switzerland-based NZZ offers a critical and fact-based outside view. We are not in the breaking-news business. We offer thoughtful, well-researched stories and analyses that go behind the headlines to explain relevant events in the U.S., in Europe and worldwide. To produce this work, the NZZ maintains an industry-leading network of expert reporters around the globe who work closely with our main newsroom in Zurich.

Sign up for our free newsletter or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or WhatsApp.