The Public Prosecution Service suspects a 56-year-old man from Velp of large-scale international drug trafficking. This took place at least from March 2020 to December 2020. The man had to account for himself this week in court in Arnhem, where a prison sentence of 9 years was demanded against him. This case involves the trafficking of hundreds of kilos of cocaine and hashish, where the suspect also involved and directed others. Money laundering of the criminal proceeds in the three years thereafter is also part of the charges.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, it concerns large-scale drug trafficking, where cocaine and hashish are transported from one continent to another. The suspect plays a role in the preparation, cutting, transport, and also in the extraction and resale of various types of drugs. This ranged from price negotiations to which spot in the airplane was most suitable to hide drugs. The prosecutor stated: And then you find yourself in a dangerous world. The word mafia has already been mentioned in this case. This is partly based on the fact that one of the suspects contacts he did business with was a person directly linked to the Italian mafia.
The crimes came to light due to a large number of messages that the suspect had sent via EncroChat and Sky. These are services for encrypted messaging, the key of which was cracked by the police in 2020. The police read thousands of messages, including a large number of chats from the 56-year-old suspect about shipments of cocaine and hashish and what needed to be done with them. And although it is a known fact that Sky and EncroChat accounts frequently change users, the Public Prosecution Service has no doubt that the suspect was the main person behind the messages.
The investigation into the suspects finances reveals money laundering, as no legal source has been found for the suspects income. He also provides no explanation for it himself. And how he truly thinks about the alleged facts, what led him to this, and whether he is willing to distance himself from the criminal circuit, there is also no insight into that.
The Public Prosecution Service weighs the seriousness and extent of the facts, plus the fact that the suspect operated in an organized context, as aggravating. This form of international drug trafficking causes significant harm, not least due to the outright devastating impact that drug addiction brings. Additionally, drug trafficking is associated with violence, settling of scores in the criminal circuit, and there is a phenomenon of undermining due to the blending of the upper and lower worlds. The consequences are significant not only in the Netherlands but also in other countries.
The Public Prosecution Service asks the court to impose not only the unconditional prison sentence of 9 years but also to grant a claim to confiscate the proceeds of drug trafficking amounting to €209,900.
