On Friday, the police dismantled the largest cocaine washing facility in the Netherlands in a converted horse riding school in Nijeveen. In the drug lab, cocaine was produced from so-called carrier material, such as clothing. The police have arrested seventeen suspects, she reports Tuesday.

In the laundry, the police found tens of thousands of liters of chemicals and about 100 kilos of cocaine. Sleeping quarters and recreation areas were also built at the riding school. The police arrested sixteen suspects in the Drenthe town, including the owner of the site.

The police also raided warehouses in Elshout and Apeldoorn the same day. In the latter location, the police found about 120,000 kilos of carrier material. Cocaine is extracted from this carrier material through a chemical process. A suspect has been arrested in Apeldoorn.

Three of the suspects have Dutch nationality, one of which also has a Colombian passport. Thirteen suspects are Colombian and one is Turkish. The police do not rule out multiple arrests. The suspects will be brought before the examining magistrate on Wednesday and Thursday.

The dismantling of the lab by the National Facility Support Decommissioning (LFO) took three days because the chemical process had to be stopped very carefully and the material had to be disposed of. LFO Chief Inspector André van Rijn: “This is the largest cocaine laboratory ever found in the Netherlands. Given the number of people working there, the installation (s), the size, the layout and the equipment, we estimate the production capacity at 150 to 200 kilos of cocaine per day. This number of kilos equals a street value of between 4.5 and 6 million euros (unadulterated). ”