The main suspicion: smuggling a load of cocaine of no less than 250 kilos to the Spanish city of Valencia. In addition, the man is suspected of preparing more drug shipments and laundering 550,000 euros.
When he was arrested on Monday, somewhere in the municipality of Stichtse Vecht, he had more than 20 grams of hard drugs and a pistol. The man wanted to leave for Spain that day, where he often visited. He also regularly went to Dubai and was sometimes in the Netherlands.
Cracked messages
Police discovered the man’s criminal activities thanks to cracked chats from an encrypted messaging service. It is not very surprising that the man turned up in this investigation by the police and the tax investigation service FIOD. He was already convicted in 2013 for more or less the same crimes.
That earned him a prison sentence of 8 years and a bill of 50 million euros. According to the Public Prosecution Service, he left that amount to the drug trafficking and extortion for which he was convicted at the time.
Lots of cash
The recent investigation also looked at where his assets are hidden. The man and his family left it open. For example, they spent a lot of money on renting cars, hotels and restaurants. A lot of money was also spent on cosmetic procedures and visiting major events.
All these expenses were paid in cash, as the man has no money in his own bank accounts. For this he uses other – otherwise innocent – people, called catchers. The man has been in pre-trial detention for two weeks, but his partner has been released.
