Moroccan mafia

From Rotterdam’s ports to Amsterdam’s clubs. The new cocaine mafias infiltrate the minds of the young, merciless gangsters who now control the European cocaine trade. A gritty beginning of Amsterdam’s new drug lords.

Amsterdam, July of 2021, on the banks of a canal in the city center. A crowd of people gather to pay their respects. Some of them shed tears. They came from all over the Netherlands to pay their last respects to one of the country’s famous figures, Peter de Vries. The star journalist of Dutch television, shot dead in the street a few days earlier. Peter de Vries was 64 years old, an investigative journalist specializing in criminal cases. For more than 30 years, he kept Dutch viewers on the edge of their seats with his hard hitting investigations. [Dutch spoken audio] For several months, he’d been working on a story following an ultra violent mafia that was operating in the Netherlands. There was a price on his head, but he refused police protection. His murder took place in the heart of Amsterdam. It’s 7 p.m., Peter de Vries, in a light colored suit, leaves the studio where he recorded his program. He goes home. He doesn’t know that the killers have been following him. Peter is shot five times at close range. [Dutch spoken audio] It’s really shocking. Horrible that something can happen. Then you’re back from work and then you’re shot. [Dutch spoken audio] This murder is not a unique case. This is the latest in a series of assassinations coordinated by drug traffickers, a phenomenon that is now threatening the whole of Europe. It seems hard to believe, but the Netherlands with its tulip fields and windmills, is now the new playground of drug cartels. In less than ten years, the Netherlands and Belgium have become the main gateway for cocaine into Europe. This is because the two largest ports on the continent are located here, Rotterdam and Antwerp. Thousands of ships from all over the world pass through every week. It’s now estimated that between 50 and 80 percent of the cocaine consumed in Europe is hidden in these containers. For customs officers, it’s a real headache. It’s impossible to check all the loads. Paul Meyer was one of the players in this traffic in the 2000s. He agreed to reveal some of his tricks to us. This is a boat from South America. Then you know that this boat is coming back here. Therefore, you need people here or you don’t. Somebody puts the containers out, simple. It’s not difficult. In the ports, fear has set in. The dockers are constantly harassed by traffickers who want to recruit them. They try to have your name. When you don’t cooperate with them, they threaten to do something to you or your family. This traffic gave birth to a new mafia led by Dutch people, all of Moroccan origin, the Mocro Maffia. Powerfully armed, these gangs are ultra violent. They do not hesitate to use torture, one of their members testifies. [Dutch spoken audio] These drug traffickers feel invincible. Attacks on journalists, a murder of a lawyer. Even the Dutch prime minister isn’t safe from their threats. A terrifying prospect to end up on their blacklist. I’m protected by the Dutch military police. It’s a special unit of them, a professional unit. I’m not allowed to say anything about how this protection is organized. This cocaine trafficking makes tens of billions of euros each year. The authorities are concerned. Are Belgium and the Netherlands becoming the first narco-states in the heart of Europe? A suburb of Amsterdam, March 2022. The beginning of an extraordinary trial. A large police force was deployed around this building, which at first sight seems to be ordinary, but is in fact highly secure. A bunker, it has been specially designed for trials related to organized crime, with surveillance cameras, armored windows and permanently closed shutters. It’s here that one of the most powerful bosses of the Mocro Maffia will be judged. He arrives in an armored vehicle. Ridouan Taghi, 44 years old. According to the police, he controls 30 percent of the cocaine traffic in Europe. He has an estimated fortune of almost 100 million euros. Alongside him, 16 of his accomplices. They are being prosecuted for six murders and approximately 20 attempted murders. An intense trial. It’s forbidden to film or even draw the faces of magistrates. Journalists follow the debates in a small room far away. According to Wouter Laumans, an expert on criminal cases, this trial is a first in the Netherlands. The prosecutors are not anonymous. They ask us not to write down their name, also of the judges. It says something about the fear that’s around the whole Marengo trial. In the courtroom, protected by bulletproof glass, the key witness of the trial. He’s the former right-hand man of Ridouan Taghi. However, since he agreed to collaborate with the police, there’s been one death after another in his entourage. When they announced that they had a crown witness, within weeks, his brother was killed. Later on, his lawyer was murdered. Then Mr. Peter de Vries became his trust person, his representative in the media. He got murdered last summer. From the depths of his prison, Ridouan Taghi reigns terror. The witness’ first lawyer had been murdered at his home in front of his wife. Today, a new lawyer replaces him. He lives under close protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He agreed to meet with us. Peter Shelton arranged to meet us at the long beaches along the North Sea, two hours drive from Amsterdam. He’s 65 years old, and his life has changed with this trial. I’m now in protection for more than a year. How does it feel living like this? It’s a little bit like a package, but actually, I’m proud I can do this job. I would never let anybody intimidate me. It’s important that a suspect has a lawyer. Somebody has to do it. For me, it feels important that in democracy, we follow the rule of law. Military personnel in plain clothes are never far. The lawyer was a close friend of journalist Peter de Vries. Both had been informed by the secret services that they were on Ridouan Taghi’s blacklist. We were discussing the dangers, the risks. It was clear that we discussed the fact that one of us could be shot, but we didn’t know who would be the first one. I told Peter that he was the biggest prize because he’s very famous. It would create far more chaos than that it would be to kill me. While working on this trial, the two friends discovered how powerful Ridouan Taghi’s organization was, and how much of a threat it posed to the Netherlands. My client has made statements up to 1,500 pages about how they work, how they do the killings, how they spot the victims. It really shows a very organized way of doing their business. This is actually also something that makes it very difficult for the Netherlands to fight with. The authorities are quite unorganized and crime is quite organized. These mafia gangs were built around the cocaine trade that has exploded in the Netherlands in recent years. The government has long underestimated this phenomenon. Yet in Amsterdam, one man warned of the rise of this new crime. This is Wouter Laumans, the journalist we met during the trial of Ridouan Taghi. He’s written two books on the subject. This is the first one, "Mocro Maffia". This was published in 2014. I sold about 140,000 copies. The book became a social phenomenon. It even inspired a fictional series on Dutch television. We just wanted to scare them. They started acting crazy, we had to react. The Dutch witnessed the merciless war between gangs to take control of the cocaine trade. "Mocro Maffia" is a slang term chosen by Wouter to refer to the Moroccan mafia. As we all know, a lot of hashish gets smuggled from Morocco to Europe. What is the epic center of European software culture? It’s Amsterdam, with the coffee shops. The whole infrastructure was already there. Then in Colombia, the cocaine cartels started targeting Europe as a market. They started shipping the drugs to West Africa. The cocaine went over the old hashish lines into Europe. That’s how it started. The guys who were running these lines became very rich. That’s the explanation why a lot of them are of Moroccan descent. The port of Rotterdam was the main money-making base for the Mocro Maffia. As the largest port in Europe, 30,000 ships pass through each year. In 2021, customs managed to seize 70 tons of cocaine. This is only a small part of the drugs that enter the country. I’ve seen guys who went from young guys with a North Face jacket on the scooter in the suburban area to multimillionaire who owns millions of real estate in Dubai in a time span of three years. This can happen. It’s not the gold dream, it’s the white dream. That’s why Ridouan Taghi stands model for this new generation of Dutch criminals. He started dealing marijuana. Then at a certain point, he replaced the hashish for bricks of cocaine. He became very wealthy. Fifty kilometers from Amsterdam, Laserdreef high security prison, where the country’s most dangerous criminals are locked up. Vito Shukrula regularly visits his clients there. At 32 years old, he’s amid Mocro Maffia’s favorite lawyers. He’s familiar with the profile of young people who were recruited by traffickers. When you talk to these kind of guys, you find out that they don’t have much in life. Sometimes they have a very bad childhood with a lot of violence, or they don’t have anything. Bad schooling, bad education, low intelligence. They are very vulnerable and they are easy targets for guys in the underworld. He’s surprised by the speed with which these young recruits go from petty crime to extreme violence. Before there were people, they were professional hitmen. But nowadays, you see young people, 18, 19 years. They may start with stealing a bike. Then within three months, they are handed a Kalashnikov from someone and they shoot somebody. Vito set up his practice in the suburbs of Amsterdam, in an area inhabited mainly by the Moroccan community. -Don’t need it anymore? -No. -Here you better stop. -Sorry? To film here. What are we filming here? They’re going to kick you, they’re going to beat you. -Why? -Why, because they’re criminals. They don’t want the neighborhood to be filmed. One of the guys that live here probably got life imprisonment for shooting a police, so they don’t care. When the police come to arrest someone, three, four, five cars, because they’re going to get into a fight. It’s not safe. Today, the Mocro Maffia accounts for half of his clientele. He built his reputation by getting one of their leaders acquitted. Ironically, his parents were fans of the film "The Godfather." They named him Vito in memory of Vito Corleone. The lawyer has noticed that the cases he’s dealt with are getting increasingly violent, often with weapons of war, Like this raid on a house in the suburbs of Amsterdam where the police discovered an arsenal. This is a case about a large stack of weapons that was found in a garage. With machine rifles, AK-47, grenades, revolvers. Everything that you need to kill people can be found in this kind of garage. If you’re talking about license plates, stolen cars, heavy artillery, suits, hoodies, everything can be found in there. It shows the level of professionalism that people use to kill people. The war between the different Mocro Maffia gangs is said to have left more than a hundred people dead. The amount of violence and the way that they use it is getting more and more extreme, like to show who’s tougher. They want to show each other I’m the boss, I can come with more extreme violence than you just try to scare each other off. The thing is that it keeps going on and on and on. Beheadings, and shooting people in broad daylight, even if they are with a baby or with the wife. There’s no rules in this game. Here are some examples of text messages sent by Ridouan Taghi to his men in the field. However, it was during a raid that the Dutch police discovered that the Mocro Maffia had reached a new level of horror. June 2020, they storm a farm. Law enforcement agencies discovered that it served as a rear base for a drug gang, a competitor of Ridouan Taghi. They inspect the rooms one by one. They find no drugs or money. However, in a garage, seven containers transformed into a cell with soundproof walls and handcuffs fixed to the floor. In one of them, a stock of police uniforms. This container fitted out as a torture room. A dentist’s chair with straps and handcuffs. In the corner, pliers, pincers and even a blowtorch. We managed to get in touch with a member of the Mocro Maffia. [Dutch spoken audio] Vito, the lawyer, acted as our intermediary. A meeting behind closed doors under a bridge in the suburbs of Amsterdam. The man is 34 years old. He belonged to a rival clan of Ridouan Taghi. He was the boss’ right-hand man, 20 years of Mocro Maffia under his belt. [Dutch spoken audio] Very quickly, the young recruits become soldiers capable of killing on command to prove their allegiance. How much money did someone get paid to kill somebody? [Dutch spoken audio] What do you think about Ridouan Taghi? I have no answer to the question. What’s his reputation? Bad, angry. You can say like a monster. A monster, like a devil. People are still afraid of him even though he’s in jail? [Dutch spoken audio] A few months after this interview, the Mocro Maffia attacked the highest level of the state. Prime Minister Mark Rutte had just announced that he was going to give an exceptional budget of 430 million euros to help the police fight against drug traffickers. It was after this announcement that the police discovered that Mocro Maffia spotters had started to follow him. The politician who used to be close to his fellow citizens and travel by bicycle, was immediately placed under heavy protection. To organize the counterattack, the Netherlands turned to Italy, a country that has become an expert in the fight against the mafia. The Dutch Minister of Justice herself went to Rome. For two days, she met with magistrates and police officers specializing in the fight against organized crime. She improvised a press conference on the spot with the Dutch media. [Dutch spoken audio] She was appointed Minister of Justice and Security only a few months ago. At 45, she has become the new face of the fight against the cocaine mafia. In Europe, everyone discovers the strength of Mocro Maffia. Do you think that Netherlands is in the front line now, in Europe? I think we are, because of the open economy and excellent infrastructure that we have, which is great and beneficial for the typical Dutchman, is also being abused by criminals. We see that we are an entrance towards Europe and the rest of the world of drugs coming in and going out. That means that if we want it or not, we are in front of this battle which is also with our neighbors with Belgium, with France, with Spain, also with Germany and Italy. You’re going to fight against them, are you afraid? -Personally? -Yes. No, then I should have chosen another job. Some people say, and some ministers say that Netherlands can become a narco-state. -What do you think of that? -No. That would mean that the politicians are being paid by drug criminals. -That is not the case. -Not the case? Definitely not. -Thank you so much. -Thank you. However, while the Netherlands is taking steps to counterattack, the Mocro Maffia has found a new target, Belgium. The motorway between Antwerp and Rotterdam is nicknamed the "Drugs Motorway." It’s one of the routes used by traffickers to flood the European market with cocaine. [Dutch spoken audio] In an unmarked vehicle, Thierry is on the lookout. He belongs to the Mobile Gendarmerie Brigade. Its mission, to intercept suspicious cars. [French spoken audio] Suddenly, he has a catch, a car is suspicious. [French spoken audio] In a few seconds, he catches up with the car. [French spoken audio] Thierry was right. [French spoken audio] The car is escorted to a motorway service area. On that day, the Federal police and Belgium customs joined forces for a major operation. They are increasing the number of checks and they search all the cars one after the other. This morning, most of the seizures involved cannabis. [French spoken audio] Also, more unusual products, like these bottles of laughing gas. In the late afternoon, the police hit the jackpot, thanks to this special van. Inside, a mobile scanner allows the cars to be examined in real-time to find what could be hidden under the bodywork. [French spoken audio] Below the light box, a suspicious bag, locked in a secret cache, invisible to the naked eye. Bud Futessanne heads the Federal police’s anti-drug unit. In ten years of service, he has learned to outwit the ingenuity of traffickers. [French spoken audio] Inside, in a simple plastic bag, two kilos of pure cocaine, a small fortune. [French spoken audio] This trafficker, a Dutchman of Moroccan origin, has just lost 100,000 euros. He was coming from Rotterdam. He was to deliver the cocaine to Brussels. In 2021, Belgium became a new cocaine hub. That year, the Belgium Federal Police succeeded in decrypting thousands of messages exchanged by traffickers. In a fortnight, they conducted more than 200 searches, seized 17 tons of cocaine and one million euros in cash. It was the Belgium Federal prosecutor himself who announced the extent of the phenomenon on the news. [French spoken audio] At the Brussels courthouse, Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw agreed to meet us. He still can’t believe the amount of money generated by the cocaine trade. [French spoken audio] The Belgium police have discovered a new type of crime that they’re not used to. Gangs fighting for control over the cocaine trade. Murders, settling of scores, Kalashnikov shootings, even grenade throwing as in this footage captured by a surveillance camera in the city center. [French spoken audio] Today, it’s the city of Antwerp that particularly worries the authorities. Located in the north of the country, 15 kilometers from the Dutch border. Antwerp, the second largest port in Europe. A gigantic industrial zone that has become the Mocro Maffia’s new playground. A headache for the Belgian customs officers. They are housed in this large dark building in the heart of the port. The fight against cocaine trafficking has become their main task. A tough challenge checking the 12 million containers that pass through the port each year. Kristian Vanderwaeren is the Federal Director of Customs. [French spoken audio] In this war, he has a secret weapon. Every day, customs officers select containers. They direct them into this long, concrete box. In reality, a giant scanner. Within a few minutes, the load is x-rayed. [French spoken audio] Customs officers select containers according to their origin, the goods declared, or sometimes, information provided by the police. The scans are then analyzed in the offices. [French spoken audio] Nothing to report in this container. However, he director is keen to show us the ingenuity of the traffickers on a previous seizure. [French spoken audio] The scan can also indicate how deep the cocaine is hidden. [French spoken audio] In this refrigerated lorry, customs officers only found about 100 kilos of cocaine. In 2020, they made a record seizure, thanks to information gathered by the police. Eleven tons of pure cocaine discovered in a single container, a total value of 450 million euros. [French spoken audio] Here, cocaine seizures have increased 30 fold in ten years. Three tons in 2013, 90 tons last year. Customs officials estimate that this would represent barely 10 percent of the drugs that actually enter the country. In Antwerp, one man knows all the secrets of the port. He met us at a cafe in the city center. It’s hard to imagine this man was at the heart of drug trafficking in the 2000s. When they ask me what is my best job, I say smuggler. Everything is inside in that time because of the parties and the money. Also, I can say the pressure is exciting. Paul Meyer was the head of a smuggling ring. He was paid by traffickers to bring their cargo of drugs safely into the port of Antwerp. Twenty years of criminal life. I know people don’t want to hear this. They want to see somebody who’s saying I’m sad and I won’t do it again. But I’m honest, it was a beautiful time. It was really beautiful time. The product is not nice. I agree, I don’t discuss also about that. Yes, I don’t like it, but I miss the trafficking. All the things around smuggling, yes, I miss it. -How much money did you make? -A lot of money. A lot of money every five weeks. The turnover was between 21 and 25 million euros every five weeks. We made a lot of money. According to the courts, he and his associates earned more than 700 million euros before the Belgium police caught up with them. In 2007, he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. Then extradited to Belgium where he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Today, he’s a free man. He claims he has gone into construction, but has forgotten nothing of the tricks he used to foil the customs officers. According to him, the port of Antwerp is a sieve. Yes, you can see all this water here is the port. It’s incredibly big, up to Holland. Next to the historic center of Antwerp, the port. It is huge, covering 135 kilometers squared. Here you can see, we can go inside. Normally, you cannot drive here. Now you can see for yourself how easy it is to come with your car up to the boat. This is a big difference in Rotterdam with the closed ports. This is an open port. Unlike the port of Rotterdam, which is completely fenced off and closed to the public, you can walk the length and breadth of the port of Antwerp, easily accessing container storage areas that are normally off limits. I told you, see it yourself. It’s easy to drive here and nobody is saying something. When they want to organize this, they close the gate, look here. The wood. Now, 80 percent of the wood is coming from where? From countries like Brazil or Peru, Brazil or whatever. The wood comes mainly from Latin America, as does the cocaine. This type of cargo is therefore the ideal hideout for traffickers. We were able to access the containers without any control. For over half an hour, we walk around sensitive off-limit areas without anyone stopping us. This is a boat from South America. If you are clever, you book your containers inside there. It’s easy when you have this information now, since you know that this boat is coming back here. Therefore, you either need people here or you don’t. Somebody puts the containers out, simple. It’s not difficult. To get this information, it’s sometimes enough to simply talk to the dockers and seafarers who are on the quay. -Hello. -Hi. [Dutch spoken audio] Seemingly, a harmless conversation, but for a smuggler, a valuable source of information. It’s in my language. However, you can see how easy you can talk with people. He explained to me everything. He also gave me other places here in Antwerp, in the port where you can also go with your car. Information is easy to get here. I only opened my window and asked something. I didn’t pay him for that information. Corruption in the port is said to be rampant. In 2021, the discovery by the Belgian police of thousands of encrypted conversations between traffickers revealed the extent of the scourge. Customs, police, shipping companies, transport companies, security agencies, the cocaine mafia has infiltrated the entire port infrastructure. Their main target, dockers. We went to the bars in the port where they are said to meet. With a hidden camera, as the subject is sensitive here. I hear a lot about corruption, how does it work? Are there people coming to you asking for some money? They try to have your name. When you don’t cooperate with them, they threaten to do something to you or your family. It’s a dangerous business. You’d rather stay out of the business. Once you are in, it’s very difficult to get out. Do you know of people? Do you think it’s possible if I could get in touch with some? -No. -I think you better not do that. Watch over what you’re doing. The dockers know the risks of revealing too much. [Dutch spoken audio] These threats are so frequent that the main dockworkers’ union made a prevention clip to alert their members the risks they take when working for the mafia. The clip features a smuggler who bribes a docker. [Dutch spoken audio] The clip alerts the dockers. Once they get involved, it’s almost impossible to get out. [Dutch spoken audio] For the traffickers, the dockers are an essential cog in the wheel. They’re the ones who have control over the containers. Niels worked for ten years on the docks. Today, he’s retired. My job was to lift containers from the ship. I operated the mobile cranes, container cranes and straddles, the big machines that take the containers from point A to B. Usually, on a ship like this, the drugs are concentrated in one container, and the traffickers have to isolate it from the rest of the cargo in order to gain access. Niels was approached several times but always refused. A guy told to me that I had to put this container on the side. There was a time he said it has to be fixed because it broken. I lifted the container and underneath it was intact. I said something is wrong here. If you agree with them, they own you, then they offer you some money. How much money can you make if you collaborate? I heard amounts from 10,000, 20,000 euros. First, you get the 20K, the next time you get 10K or 5K. You still have to do it, if you don’t do it, you’re fucked. More surprisingly, the traffickers have found another way to bribe the dockworkers. They pay them in cocaine. Most of the young dockers who collaborated use coke themselves because they are not able to do the physical work that a docker does. They use coke to be more fucked up to have more power to work. The traffickers know that, so they pay the guys in coke. They tell them if you do this, you get five grams of this and that. They make them addicted to coke and then they give them a small amount that they can sell themselves or whatever. Do you think that we still can fight against these traffickers? It’s a war nobody can win. Nobody can win it. In Antwerp, some neighborhoods are now completely plagued by drug trafficking. Cocaine arrives in such quantities that it’s sold on the streets. A gram is the cheapest in Europe, 40 euros, half the price than in Paris. [French spoken audio] Filip Dewinter has been a city councilor and member of parliament for more than 20 years. He leads a Flemish nationalist party, Vlaams Belang, which is classified as far right. [French spoken audio] He is a major figure in Belgian politics. However, he is only accompanied by two bodyguards as the neighborhood is in the hands of the Mocro Maffia. [Dutch spoken audio] Today, he is one of the few politicians willing to speak out publicly about the violence in Antwerp. He wants to show us a scene filmed by a surveillance camera a few weeks earlier. A man shoots his gun at the front of a house, eight shots in the street. The shooter is not hiding, takes his time, and surprisingly, is filmed by his accomplice with a mobile phone. [French spoken audio] Tonight, Filip Dewinter is due to attend the City Council. Drug trafficking is on the agenda. This is a sensitive subject on which the mayor absolutely refuses to speak publicly. [French spoken audio] The City Council takes place in the historic center of Antwerp, in the majestic 16th century City Hall. A solemn and formal setting. This does not stop Filip Dewinter from pounding his fist on the table. He has just learned that some of the majority councilors have suggested that since the war on drugs seems to be lost already, cocaine use should simply be decriminalized. That makes him angry. [Dutch spoken audio] The mayor does not want to enter into the controversy of decriminalization. According to him, the city simply cannot win this war on drugs alone. [Dutch spoken audio] In Antwerp, cocaine trafficking is estimated to be worth 50 billion euros. This is the equivalent of five times the city’s budget. The drug traffickers are now extremely rich. Like in Holland, they do not hesitate to attack the state directly. On the 24th of September, police in Brussels foiled an attempt to kidnap the Minister of Justice. This member of the government who had issued arrest warrants against Mocro Maffia leaders based in Dubai, now lives under heavy protection in an undisclosed location. [French spoken audio] Belgium and the Netherlands may not be on the verge of becoming narco-states yet, but one thing is certain, the cocaine mafia has moved into Europe, and is more powerful than ever.