‘They’ll Figure Out Where You Live’: The Rise of Europe’s New Drug Cartels

ANTWERP, Belgium – Earlier this month a senior police inspector who handled important drug investigations in a major port city was arrested under suspicion of providing a major cartel with information about police operations and rival cartel activity. But this wasn’t Miami in the 80s. This was Antwerp, Belgium, in the heart of the European Union.

News of a suspected leak at the centre of their operations came as a big blow for Antwerp’s authorities, in a city which is the largest entry point for South American cocaine in Europe. So much cocaine came through the port last year, a record high of 110 tonnes, that the authorities are finding more than they can destroy. 

But only a small portion of the cocaine being shifted through ports such as Antwerp and Rotterdam in the Netherlands is found. The vast majority gets through undetected to be distributed to lucrative markets across the continent by organised crime gangs.

Never before has so much of Europe’s cocaine passed through such a narrow part of Europe, and it’s had an effect: this business has burst from the underworld to the streets in this wealthy part of northern Europe, where overall crime rates are amongst the lowest in the world.

The huge profits to be made has set off a series of internecine battles for control of the trade between family-dominated groups who control smuggling at Antwerp’s port. Last summer bombs exploded all over the city as the rival gangs intimidated each other. And over the border in the Netherlands, citizens are still reeling from gang wars for control of the Dutch port of Rotterdam, Amsterdam and the regional trade which have sparked dozens of murders across Europe over the last decade.

I spent over a year investigating the cocaine cartels behind this violent trade in Belgium and the Netherlands for “Gateway”, a new podcast series for Project Brazen. Over the course of 2022, I would witness what could only be described as serious, ongoing efforts by these gangs to not only eliminate rivals, but attack and subvert the state itself. Here, a new breed of European gangster operates with an aggression not seen in Europe since Italy’s long struggle with the La Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and 90s. 

“Look around,” one Dutch source said at the start of my investigation as we watched Dutch hipsters and foreign expats in Amsterdam. “Rich white people sipping coffee, very safe and affluent. But right alongside it is the operational centre for the cocaine trade in Europe. It’s a small city and a smaller community you’re trying to investigate…everyone will notice. Once they figure out who you are, they’re going to figure out whatever you’re into… women, men, drugs, booze, gambling. And they’re going to send it to you until they get some leverage,” he warned me. 

When he told me that my experience covering conflicts and terrorism around the world would come in useful on this project, I didn’t believe him. But now, a year on, I see the tranquil streets of Antwerp and the peaceful canals of Amsterdam in a different light. 

In Antwerp, over the past five years, it feels increasingly like the state itself is under attack. Just last year, Dutch teenagers with encrypted mobile phones and an AK-47 were found in a car tailing Belgium’s justice minister. Half a dozen indicted cartel bosses live in Dubai or Turkey, mostly out of prosecutorial reach. Over the border, the Netherlands is hosting the largest murder trial in Dutch history, that of Moroccan Dutch crime boss Ridouan Taghi – one of Europe’s most feared and most prolific cocaine traffickers.  

Because of Taghi’s infamous reputation for violence - he’s on trial along with 17 others for six murders between 2015 and 2017 - the trial has to be held in a warehouse converted into a bunker surrounded by drones and Dutch commandos. 

Since his 2019 arrest and extradition from Dubai, Taghi has been held under the tightest of security measures, stopped from communicating with the outside world from the most secure prison in the Netherlands and only allowed to speak with attorneys. Dubbed the “Marengo” trial, as the case was randomly named by a court computer, the charges against Taghi don’t even begin to cover the number of murders, attempted murders and metric tons of cocaine trafficked by his gang. 

Nevertheless from behind bars, as a senior figure in the Mocro Mafia, a loosely organised crime network headed by Dutch-Moroccans, he is suspected of coordinating the shocking execution of the most famous crime reporter in the Netherlands, Peter de Vries, on an Amsterdam street in 2021. 

As we researched the podcast, speaking with journalists, current and former cops, prosecutors, customs officials as well as former and current gang and cartel members, many of whom would not allow recording, it became clear that Taghi had been waging a brazen war with the Dutch state itself. And people who understand the case remain scared - for their own safety and for the system itself.

Other suspected victims of Taghi include bloggers, spy shop owners, rival gangsters, the brother of a prosecution witness, the lawyer for the same witness, the state witness's public relations advisor, as well as random bystanders and cases of mistaken identity.  

But he didn’t stop with the murders. Taghi’s assault on Dutch society included ordering car bombs and rocket propelled grenades to target some of the most prestigious newsrooms in Amsterdam, revelations that his organisation had retained the services of a Dutch Special Operations soldier to provide weapons and training to his assassination teams, stockpiled the largest arms bust in Dutch history, and corrupted multiple local officials into provide fake identification cards and passports and run checks on people’s addresses for the gang.

As my investigation continued, the feeling of claustrophobia increased. “They’ll figure out where you live, that’ll only cost about €500,” said a source as a warning I shouldn’t register with the local council at my apartment in Amsterdam. 

All year new revelations would arrive: the Dutch Prime Minister had to stop riding his bike to work after teenagers with encrypted phones were suspected of following his movements; the Crown Princess could not attend her first year of university because of a specific threat from Taghi. 

By the end of the summer as we completed reporting on the podcast, Taghi’s cousin, Yousef, went on trial for passing messages to the gangster, in which Taghi explained he’s got a few million euros hidden and Yousef needed to hire mercenaries to storm the prison with a helicopter. If that didn’t work, he suggested kidnapping some prison employees, or maybe the prime minister or crown princess to trade for his freedom. He instructed Yousef to arrange for tons of motor oil to be spilled on the roads surrounding the prison to hinder a police response. 

That revelation had sent Dutch commandos to the roof of the facility armed with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, because it had become clear that no matter how over the top something might sound, Taghi might actually try it, because in Europe the war on drugs has turned into a war on government itself. 

And it’s not going to stop with Taghi’s prosecution and seemingly inevitable life sentence. There’s too much money for the system to fully reject and that money will allow the next Taghi to hire the same hitmen, bribe the same officials and kill anyone who tries to stop them. 

Aside from the social and health damage from the drug, in a corner of Europe which now records the highest rates of cocaine use on the continent, the public cost has turned into a sort of moral injury for capitalism. The constant search for the cheapest, easiest and fastest ways to move goods and money around the world has inevitably brought around a golden age of cocaine.

An ex-Belgian cop from Antwerp told me over beers one night that his office had estimated that to simply reduce the level of illegal financial activity in Antwerp - centred around diamonds, gold and cocaine - to a level similar to other European cities would cost around €3 billion, around five percent of the city’s annual GDP.

Even so, is there enough public will to support such a crackdown? I asked the ex-cop whether many local politicians run on a promise to make cocaine more expensive and harder to get. 

He just smiled and shook his head.

You can listen to all episodes of Gateway here.