Anyone familiar with the Georgian-Jewish Melikhov clan in Antwerp?

At the end of April police conducted searches in Hainaut, but also in Namur, Liège and Luxembourg. They managed to dismantle a large-scale criminal organization active in drug trafficking, counterfeit money, human trafficking, money laundering and customs fraud.
Links have been established with mafia organizations. The Albanians controlled the cannabis plantations, the Italian mafia supplied the counterfeit notes. At the head of this network is Francis Leclaire. The man is 71 years old, he has a very surprising course since he starts as a hairdresser, he specializes in wigs and then, first reconversion, he turns to the textile sector in the 70s.
First, he is a simple importer of Asian t-shirts and then makes his own textiles. And he knows a meteoric rise. He becomes CEO of several factories. At the end of the 90s, Francis Leclaire is considered a pioneer in the textile revival. He is a visionary who manages to build faster than in India or Asia.

Almost 1000 kilos of heroin intercepted in Belgium
WORLD June 20, 2018 06:09
antwerp - Belgian Customs has one of the largest drug seizures ever done in the port of Antwerp. In a container with calcium carbonate that was intended for a company in Kontich, more than 954 kilos of heroin was hidden. The party, which has a street value of 55 million euros, came from the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran.
In the container 57 bags with 15 kilos of drugs were found to be sitting, according to the Gazet van Antwerpen. The catch was last month, but has only recently been announced.
The Antwerp prosecutor's office and the federal police are investigating the smugglers behind the transport.

Jep, part of the Georgian mafia in Antwerp. Made quite a bit of noise in the 90's.

In Antwerp the Audi A4 of a well-known drug criminal was burnt down at night, according to the Gazet van Antwerpen. The car burned completely. The fire threatened the adjacent buildings.
The incident happened in the Ledeganckstraat in Borgerhout. The fire brigade was unable to make any statements about the cause of the fire on Thursday morning. According to the Gazet, the fire points to a new attack in the Antwerp drug milieu. The car would be owned by Mohamed A., aka Debana (The Bee). This figure has a criminal past and according to newspaper sources is involved in an organization that would unload large-scale cocaine parties in the port of Antwerp.

Italian Police arrested 3 men on charges of attempted murder. Mario Rizzo, Gerlando Russotto and Salvatore Prestia, brother-in-law of Fabrizio Messina (brother of Gerlandino), acting boss of Porto Empedocle crime family. They shot and wounded in Liege Saverio Sacco in 2017, involved in marijuana and weapons trafficking.
Mario Rizzo, one of them, is now repentant. He will shine a light on the feuds of the Sicilian Mafia in Wallonia.

Last week the federal judicial police of Brussels managed to thwart a carefully planned robbery at a bank branch in Ixelles.
They arrested four men, they were anything but strangers to the courts. Three of them, Djurica Djordjevic (64), Koenraad Spitaels (61) and David Marloye (52) have each received several convictions for armed and violent robberies.
Djordjevic -alias Duckie- was already associated with Patrick Haemers in the 1980s and for decades was considered one of the most notorious robbers of our country. He would have been the brain behind a robbery at the mail sorting center of Charleroi X in 1989, even though he was never condemned for it.
Koenraad Spitaels was part of the gang around Marcel Habran, the godfather of the Liege criminal milieu. Together with several other perpetrators, he committed a robbery in 2000 to a cash transfer at the Findel airport in Luxembourg. It then came to a chase and a shooting. The man was sentenced to 20 years in prison and released only recently.
David Marloye also has a long trail of armed robbery. The fourth man, Abderafid BO (54), is less known.

Fucking hell, those ancient guard bank robbers just keep on going

I remember Spitaels from the time when all of those professional robbers in Liege from Habran's entourage were whacking each other. Old habits die hard...

I went to Liege a few times gritty, rough city LOL.

Haha..

Thieves in Belgium Steal More Than $1M Worth of Red Bull Drinks

https://www.voanews.com/a/thieves-i...1m-worth-of-red-bull-drinks/4528192.html

I used to go to Liege quite often. The city isn't too bad and the nightlife scene is quite fun. One time I did see a guy who got stabbed outside a pizzeria lol.
Generally the situation has improved a lot in recent years and I never feel threatened going into Liege. It's still one of Belgium's thievery and robbery capitals tho.

Thanks I went there in the roaring nineties not long after the murder of André Cools.

Most of the Flemish guys work with the Dutch. Maybe one day Flanders will join us.

Trust me, you guys wouldn't even want the Flemish

Almost 2 tons of cocaine in the port of Ghent
PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 2018 12:30

The Belgian authorities have discovered almost two tons of cocaine in the port of Ghent. The shipment was packed in three containers with tiles from Brazil.
There are 1,900 blocks of pressed cocaine found. The federal judicial police of East Flanders says the cocaine has a street value of 100 million euros. The investigation into the case is ongoing. No people have been arrested.
About half of the cocaine that enters Europe goes through the Belgian and Dutch ports.

Since early 2017, authorities in ports in Latin America and the Caribbean have intercepted more than 50 tonnes of cocaine destined for Europe with the support of a container control program of the United Nations. More than half of that cocaine was destined for Belgium.

Never knew that about Belgium, i always thought main entrance for drugs is Spain/Netherlands. Never thought about Belgium.

The port of Antwerp is a major entrance; one of the most internationally active ports in Western Europe and for a developed country like Belgium it's remarkably easy to bribe a docker over there. A ton of big time criminal organizations use the port to smuggle in huge cocaine shipments: Italian, Dutch, Albanian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Turkish, Greek, Moroccan...crime groups have all been reported making use of the port. Most of the cocaine that enters the port is destined to be distributed in other regions of the Benelux. Local distribution in Antwerp is mostly handled by a handful criminal Moroccan families from the Borgerhout district.
The Greeks used to control the port. there wasn't a shipment of cocaine coming through without paying off the Greeks, but their activity has been on the low ever since they locked up Eleftherios Papadatos (who's probably about 80 years old at the moment).

Just bought the book ''BORGEROKKO MAFIA''.. Has anyone over here already read it by any chance??

I've read it. As with the Mocro-Maffia, I think the books are interesting for a curiosity read, but at the same time they're pompous and sensationalist. They want to make it seem like the "Mocro-Maffia" is this huge organized crime syndicate while in reality they're a bunch of cocaine dealers (and definitely big time dealers, but most of the time they're just one or two steps above street-level trafficking) that can turn on each other at any given moment. There's a lot of disorganization, hence a lot of violence and most of them don't stay on top for a very long time. In districts where there's a big Moroccan population, the street-level sales is overwhelmingly Moroccan which lend a few of them the opportunity to become wholesalers to the street dealers as well - the same way it's happened with the Antilleans as well in the Netherlands.
In a way it definitely is organized crime, but at the same time they still got a lot to learn. There's a ton of non-Moroccan groups operating at the moment in Belgium and the Netherlands that still move tons, while the Moroccan gangs - probably due to the fact that their population is incredibly clustered and in turn the violence is as well - garner way too much attention. Any "taking over" statement is a crock: it's extremely rare to see a clash between a Moroccan group and a group from another background, mostly because when it comes to the higher echelons above the street-level the Moroccan groups in reality still tend to keep to their own district and directly challenging other established groups is way too much of a risky move.
In Borgerhout a lot of the drug feuds are at the same time local family feuds, sometimes even between related families.

Indeed. In the big Dutch newspaper the AD, it was written that the Justice Departement in Holland is of the opinion that South American cartels prefer to do business with the Albanians these days instead of the Moroccans because of all the attention they attract by all the feuding and killing..

https://www.crimesite.nl/albanezen-verdringen-marokkanen-op-drugsmarkt/

Have you ever been to Morocco yourself btw TKJ?? I have, a couple of times actually. To Al-Hoceima, Saïdia and for a very brief time Tanger.

It's incredible the houses they built over there, with money they've made over here. Even guys who only have social benefits, are somehow capable of building some very nice cribs. All the while, undermining our economy like crazy.. SMH

The Moroccans do a good job in making headlines, but they never get the respect of the penose.

@BillyBrizzi

I've been invited to Nador, where a lot of Moroccans over here seem to originate from, but never really had the time to go. I've been to Moroccan weddings a few times, which was nice enough, even though they're a lot more traditional than Turkish or Albanian weddings.

Yeah they invest like crazy over in Morocco. Some of those houses, aside from the fact that entire families live there, could be considered mansions over here.

Regardless of their shaky reputation, Moroccans are remarkably easy to get along with. I could make the same case for Turks, Kurds and Albanians to be honest. The difference is that Turks, Kurds and Albanians are basically respectful at all times, while Moroccans have to come to a certain age of wisdom. Unless you know them or one of their brothers or cousins personally, some of the younger Moroccan kids can annoy the heck out of you

The media likes to stir up everything. Even when it comes to the Albanians, there's a lot of sensationalist crap being thrown around. Whenever I read something like "Albanians control 60% of the cocaine market in the UK" I throw up in my mouth a little. Especially since the same newspaper can write an article two weeks before where they claim it's homegrown crime groups from Merseyside who import and distribute most of the cocaine. Popular journalism is a complete joke. To use the UK as an example, Albanians are no doubt involved in the distribution of cocaine in the UK, but the LARGE majority of the importation of the drug is done by local British groups that can be from anywhere in the UK.

Same with the Netherlands. There's still a lot of local Dutch outfits importing and moving that stuff by the truckload.

I guess they always need a certain catchphrase. First it's the Yugo's, then it's the Dutch Travellers, then it's the Yugo's again, then it's the Turks, then it's the Turkish Kurds, then it's the Albanians, then the Antilleans, then the Travellers again, then it's the Moroccans...and now we're back to the Albanians again...
Just wait until a Calabrian owner of some pizzeria in Maastricht gets arrested for cocaine trafficking. There'll be articles and reports on how the Ndrangheta took over the Dutch cocaine market in 3 days time for weeks to come.

The police arrested five men after the interception of 4000 kilos of cocaine in the port of Antwerp. The container with the drugs was unloaded in Oosterhout, the Netherlands. Three men were arrested. In Belgium, two men were later arrested in the ages of 21 and 48 years.

They were behind several huge shipments, the Dutchman Paul van W. would have done business directly with members of the Clan del Golfo, the largest drug cartel in Colombia. He met them in Panama, among others, Colombian media reports. Paul had the interest of the DEA, after he had come on the radar for cocaine trafficking in 2011.
13 people were arrested the leader of the organization is an Italian woman known as La Donna.

This Italian woman known as La Donna. Did she belong to Ndrangheta, Camorra or Cosa Nostra? Or was she on her own, do you know?

Is there any involvement in organized crime among members of Belgium's German community by the way ?

They only said she is Italian we have to see when she goes on trial here, considering the major presence of the 'ndrangheta in Colombia to them most likely.

BTW most Italian Colombians come from Salerno, Basilicata and Calabria.