Belgium seizes fake chocolate bunny crafted from solid lump of MDMA in customs sting 

A batch of Easter bunnies seized by veteran customs officer Pol Meuleneire was crafted from a lump of MDMA – the raw essence of the party drug, ecstasy. 

Known as the gateway into Europe for Latin-American cocaine, Belgium has now also become an arena for mail-order synthetic drugs, made in Europe and sent worldwide.

The false chocolate bunnies had been parceled up and posted in Belgium, addressed to a buyer in Hong Kong, only to be intercepted at the Brussels airport freight terminal.

Using a scanner which adopts Raman spectroscopy to identify substances by their chemical fingerprint – Meuleneire took a reading against a chocolate rabbit. 

The screen flashed green and the analysis was clear: ‘Caution: MDMA (ecstasy)’.

This photograph taken on April 6, 2023, at the Brussels Airport in Zaventem shows a package with statues containing ecstasy

A Belgian customs officer opens a bottle that contains ecstasy pills as he controls packages at Brussels Airport in Zaventem on April 6, 2023

A Belgian customs officer uses a “Raman” scanner to control what seems to be a chocolate bunny at Brussels Airport in Zaventem on April 6, 2023

‘So you see? It’s pure MDMA,’ the 61-year-old said, according to France24. ‘So here we have, bumpety-bump, one or two kilogrammes of this. With one kilogramme you make six thousand ecstasy pills.’

Several more illicit drug deliveries began to arrive from packages received within the past week.

A Peppa Pig branded lunchbox destined for New Zealand itself proved harmless, but the packaging it was carried in was another story.

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Packed into a corrugated plastic parcel divider was ketamine, an anaesthetic and horse tranquillizer misused as a recreational drug and one of the fastest growing illegal exports through the airport postal depot.

A Belgian customs officer opens a package with bed sheets, inside the carton there is MDMA

A Belgian customs officer finds crystal meth in a children’s toy at Brussels Airport in Zaventem on April 6, 2023

A Belgian customs officer uses a “Raman” scanner to control what seems to be a chocolate bunny at Brussels Airport in Zaventem on April 6, 2023

A Belgian customs officer open a bottle that contains ecstasy pills as he controls packages at Brussels Airport in Zaventem on April 6, 2023

This photograph taken on April 6, 2023 at the Brussels Airport in Zaventem shows ecstasy pills

A Belgian customs officer inspects what seems to be a chocolate bunny at Brussels Airport in Zaventem on April 6, 2023

A Belgian customs officer open a bottle that contains ecstasy pills as he controls packages at Brussels Airport in Zaventem

A child’s toy chemistry set for studying the growth of crystals was found to contain a shrink-wrapped bag of crystal meth, an illegal and addictive synthetic stimulant.

Most of the mail-order exports are of synthetic drugs made in rogue labs and covert pharma plants in Belgium and especially, according to Belgian officials, the Netherlands.

Ketamine, MDMA and methamphetamine are disguised in everyday objects or packaged in jars marked as legal vitamin supplements, then mailed from ordinary post offices in Belgium, France and Germany.

‘Here, we’re talking mainly about using the Belgian postal service, which might attract less attention from customs officers in the arrival countries than the Dutch one,’ a customs officer told AFP.

‘The smugglers use mules to transport the parcels and to post them from all over Belgium, and other European countries, and send them all around the world.’