"Ridouan Taghi on the radar of American DEA" (UPDATE)
October 18, 2019
"Ridouan Taghi on the radar of American DEA" (UPDATE)
The American drug investigation organization DEA thinks that the fugitive Ridouan Taghi is part of a kind of super cartel. Together with leading figures from the Italian, Irish and Bosnian Mafia from Dubai, he would control a large part of the European cocaine trade. The AD publishes that Friday but BN / De Stem and Crimesite published about it last month.
BN / De Stem and Crimesite based themselves on pieces in Bosnian media that have been online for a long time. The documents were leaked from a request for legal assistance from the Netherlands to Bosnia. The documents show that the Public Prosecution Service in the Netherlands received information from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in August 2018 about an alleged drug cartel in which various Dutch people were allegedly active.
Rico and Noffel
Similarly, Taghi's alleged criminal partner Richard R. , nicknamed Rico de Chileen, and the lifelong- convicted Naoufal "Noffel" F. would be counted by the DEA as part of this network.
Edin G.
Edin G. from Bosnia and Herzegovina would also be part of the super cartel. According to DEA, this G., of whom some family members would be active in the Netherlands and who himself grew up in Brabant, is the leader of the so-called Tito and Dino cartel, one of the 50 largest drug organizations in the world. The American information provided shows that more than 14 tonnes of cocaine were intercepted in 2017, linking the police to Edin G., including 5,300 kilos from MedellÃn (Colombia) in the port of Antwerp, worth 200 million euros (13 October 2017). ( Text continues under the ads. )
Daniel Kinahan
The police records also show that the DEA had an observation team running at Daniel Kinahan's wedding in the expensive Burj al Arab, with an average overnight price of $ 24,000 one of the most exclusive hotels in the world. During the party they see, among others, Edin G. and Rafaele Imperiale, an Italian who is linked to the Italian Mafia and who lived in the Netherlands for some time and was involved in the healing of the stolen Van Gogh paintings. Imperiale has been sentenced in absentia in Italy to 18 years in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering. In December 2018, the Dutch OM already announced that it saw a connection between Rico de Chileen, Ridouan Taghi and Imperiale. It relied mainly on decrypted PGP messages.
Kinahan and Imperiale would also collaborate with the Taghi group, the DEA suspects.
Dubai
The super cartel would operate from Dubai. The police estimate in the documents that 100,000 kilos of cocaine are smuggled to the port of Rotterdam every year. This network would account for a third of them. In 2018, more than 19,000 kilos of cocaine were seized in the port of Rotterdam.
Attorneys
The lawyers of some of the people mentioned above say in the AD that their clients are not prosecuted for drug trafficking.
Leon van Kleef, lawyer "Rico de Chileen": "I note that there is currently no charge against my client for the possession of drugs or the smuggling thereof. There is no drug charge. Not in America, South America or in Europe. "
Inez Weski, until Thursday Ridouan Taghi's lawyer in the Marengo trial: "It can only be established that this is the umpteenth series of very indefinite and apparently unsubstantiated reports."
Menno Buntsma, lawyer of Edin G .: "Justice confirms that the client is not a suspect in this affair, neither in Bosnia nor in the Netherlands, and no criminal complaint against the client has been filed worldwide."
