Excellencies, Commissioner, members of Europol and Eurojust,
Welcome to the city of Amsterdam.
It is my understanding that the ministers will today sign an important action plan that will form the basis of a stronger concerted offensive against organised crime. Unfortunately, we have been confronted with the dire need for such international cooperation when the safety of the Belgian Minister of Justice Mr. Van Quickenborne was threatened recently.
I hope Minister Verlinden will convey the best wishes for Mr. Van Quickenborne’s safety from the City of Amsterdam.
Rest assured that this city supports the action plan. I offer my help to implement it, in every way possible.
Let me also express my sincere thanks to Mrs. Yesilgöz-Zegerius, minister for Justice and Security of the Netherlands, both for hosting this important conference and inviting me to speak here. It is an honour and a privilege.
And, above all, I consider this a huge opportunity to share some of my thoughts on a topic that has haunted this city for several years.
A little over a year ago, only a short walk from here, along the Amstel River, thousands of people queued outside of a local theatre. Young and old, white and people of colour, rich and poor, TV-stars and ordinary people from all walks of life.
They were willing to wait for hours in intense sunshine to pay their respects to the crime reporter, Peter R. de Vries, who was murdered two weeks prior.
Peter was much more than a reporter. He routinely helped families of the victims of horrible crimes as well as the victims of failures of the justice system.
He worked with the police to solve murders but also spoke truth to power when he thought the authorities were making mistakes.
In the last months of his life, Peter was a non-legal counsel to the crown witness in the important Marengo trial involving members of a leading drug mafia.
Peter was not the first victim of organised drug criminals, however. Derk Wiersum, the lawyer of the crown witness, was shot and killed outside his house two years earlier. A year before that, Redouan, the brother of the crown witness was also murdered.
In early 2018, Mohammed Bouchikhi, a 17-year-old student was mistaken for somebody else and shot and killed in front of the children of the community centre where he worked as an intern.
Peter, Derk, Redouan and Mohammed’s deaths made headlines in the newspapers.
However, the reality is that they are just the tip of the iceberg.
Under the surface, organised, subversive drug crime has been chipping away at both the rule of law and the very fabric of society for some time now.
Youngsters, often intellectually challenged ones, are recruited into criminal organisations, and destined either for an early grave or a life spent in prison.
Large sums of drug money are used to buy property and businesses or otherwise threaten to corrupt our society and economy
The Netherlands ranks amongst the most open economies in the world.
The City of Amsterdam is proud of its centuries-long history of being a European centre for the free flow of goods, people and ideas.
And yet, international and local criminals have also discovered that Amsterdam is one of the best-connected cities in Europe, with both an airport that functions as a global hub and the Ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp within close proximity.
Consequently, Amsterdam has become a key location in the cocaine trade.
The bosses reside mainly in Amsterdam, and three-quarters of the criminal drug clusters in the Netherlands are predominantly based here.
In addition, many criminal networks and families have turned our city into the capital of underground banking in the Netherlands.
Estimates of the amount of cocaine money laundered in Europe range from 15 to 30 billion euros per year.
Intermediaries — corrupt trust offices, notaries, estate agents, lawyers play an essential role in corrupting real estate, and criminal involvement in the legitimate cannabis sector, tourism sector and hospitality industry.
It also creates unfair competition for legal businesses.
The business model of the cocaine trade is quite simple. Wholesalers ship in bulk from the producers, often from Latin America. The consumers are supplied by the retailers: the dealers who supply small portions that are ready to use. In between there are the middlemen.
The enormous profit margins keep this business model alive.
When the purchase price is Twenty-Nine Thousand Euros (€29,000) per kilo and the sales price is Fifty-Two Thousand Euros (€ 52,000), then that amounts to a profit of almost Eighty per cent (80%)!!!
Given that there are almost four million European cocaine consumers, this is a dangerously attractive market that draws ruthless criminals.
Before I talk about how I believe we can turn the tide, let me first take you both back in history and a little bit further along the Amstel River. One of its branches used to be the location of the Dutch Cocaine Factory that was established at the beginning of the twentieth century. For many years it was the largest cocaine producer in the world. Because it had a permit, the production was entirely legal and took place on a large scale. Later, it also produced heroine and other drugs, for medicinal purposes. However, the definition of what constituted medicinal use was quite broad, if you know what I mean.
The Dutch Cocaine Factory enjoyed a flourishing legal business for decades, up until cocaine was ultimately replaced as an ingredient for pharmaceuticals.
Somewhere in time the world’s attitude towards drugs changed.
I will leave it up to the historians to explain why this happened.
Last year, the United States looked back on the last fifty years from when President Nixon declared drugs “public enemy number one” and began the “war on drugs”. This has cost American tax payers more than a trillion dollars. Much of the police’s capacity has been spent putting millions of addicted people in jail, while hundreds of thousands of lives world-wide have been destroyed in the process.
Fortunately, most European leaders go a little easier on the tough talk.
Indeed, the phrase “war on drugs” is heard much less often on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
However, elements of that approach have been adopted here as well, including, amongst other things, harsher punishments, more legal instruments for law enforcement, and more money and police capacity for intercepting drug transports.
Please let me be very clear: I support many of these measures.
I absolutely want the murderers to receive the appropriate punishment.
I welcome providing our great detectives and police agents with everything they need to fight organised crime.
I applaud every kilo that is seized and unable to be turned into profit.
But we have to admit, the results are not good enough.
Organised crime has become too powerful and too wealthy.
The market has become simply too attractive.
I am not the first person to draw this conclusion.
In 2011, the Global Commission on Drugs was established by international leaders such as Kofi Annan, several former presidents and prime ministers of European countries, senior officials from the US and scientists and experts.
They call on policy makers to, and I quote:
Begin the transformation of the global drug prohibition regime.
Replace drug policies and strategies driven by ideology and political convenience with fiscally responsible policies and strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights […] Ensure that the international conventions are interpreted and/or revised to accommodate robust experimentation with harm reduction, decriminalisation and legal regulatory policies.
Break the taboo on debate and reform. The time for action is now.
End of quote. Eleven years later, the time remains now.
In 2014, this Global Commission developed five pathways for reforming drug policies:
- Prioritising public health;
- Ensuring access to controlled medicines;
- Decriminalising personal use and possession;
- Relying on alternatives to punishment for non-violent, low-level actors in illicit drug markets, and promoting longer-term socio-economic developmental efforts to offer them a legitimate exit strategy;
- Regulating the drug markets, and rolling back organised crime and its corruptive and violent influence.
I will elaborate on the last of these points.
Before returning to cocaine, I will turn your attention for a moment to cannabis, because this sector provides a lucrative investment opportunity for cocaine bosses.
Regulating drug markets should start by regulating the cannabis market and decriminalise the production of cannabis. In Amsterdam this should go hand in hand with taking measures to reduce demand. For there is already too little capacity to implement and enforce existing regulation.
While in some parts of the world decriminalisation is already happening for medical use, recreational use is now also either partially or completely decriminalised in Spain, Germany and Italy[1].
Supply and demand for cannabis will always exist. By criminalising the supply and demand, we only serve to create a profitable market for criminals. Cannabis is now still grown illegally in apartments, and the danger posed by fire hazards and rip deals have strong adverse effects on our neighbourhoods. The illegal production facilities that the police uncover nearly every day are only a fraction of what we know is out there. Regulation of smoking and alcohol has shown that it is possible to make the markets for harmful products more manageable, including reducing health hazards.
For the sake of time, I won’t go into synthetic drugs, although the markets are certainly intertwined; instead, I would like to elaborate more on the cocaine trade and market.
To be honest, in my heart I am convinced that the best results for our societies can be achieved by decriminalising cocaine and regulating the market.
However, I am a realist and I know there is too little political support to introduce such measures.
In The Netherlands there is no American style “war on drugs” when it comes to cocaine. The police concentrate on cocaine confiscation and of course finding drug traders at different levels of the business.
Let me say that in this respect the Dutch police has some recent impressive success of which they may be proud.
Again, I refer to the Merengo trial.
The confiscation numbers sound impressive.
Last year, police confiscated over Seventy Thousand kilograms of cocaine in the Port of Rotterdam, amounting to a street value of over 3.5 billion euros.
In addition, a record number of cocaine collectors and other people involved in the drug trade (many coming from Amsterdam) were arrested.
Unfortunately, we know that confiscating cocaine doesn’t necessarily lead to less cocaine on the streets. Around twenty years ago, roughly 10% of all cocaine was being confiscated; today, around 75% of all cocaine is confiscated.
It has not had an impact on demand, supply, or price.
It has caused tensions and debts in the criminal world, more black money and shootings.[2]
So let us face the facts: The “war on drugs” does not work.
Confiscation alone, also does not work.
And there is no regulation on the horizon for cocaine.
I hope we can all agree on that we have to find an alternative strategy.
This should consist of three parts.
We have to reduce the violence and the number of weapons on our streets.
We also have to promote economic and social development of certain districts and neighbourhoods.
And we have to trace, disrupt and cut off illegal money flows.
I will speak briefly on the first two and then concentrate on the third part of the strategy. By the way, the Chief Commissioner of Police and the Chief Prosecutor of the Public Prosecutors Office and I have produced a Joint Strategy called the "Amsterdam against drug crime-plan.” This plan includes much of what I will mention here. I brought some copies for all of you.
Regarding the use of violence, the availability of weapons on the streets and the ease with which fire arms and hand grenades are being used is a source of great concern. My concern is exacerbated by the fact that more and more youngsters are using these kinds of weapons and the number of minors suspected of committing murder or attempted murder has increased in recent years.[3]
Last year, in a Europol coordinated operation, over One Thousand Five Hundred Thirty firearms were taken off the streets, by targeting the illegal trade of converted alarm and gas weapons. These blank firing pistols have become a weapon of choice for criminals as they can easily be converted to discharge live ammunition. Indeed, it is this type of firearm that is believed to have been used to kill Peter. R. de Vries. Our countries and many more have worked together in the framework of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT).[4] These successes show that by joining forces, intelligence and knowledge, we can make it difficult for criminal networks to arm themselves.
Let’s strengthen this form of cooperation.
Like in many other cities across Europe, there are neighbourhoods in Amsterdam that have become breeding grounds for criminals.
Many people in these neighbourhoods do not face only one problem, but rather a combination of problems, such as bad housing, unemployment, a lack of education, unstable family situations, etc. Youngsters grow up in an environment where the only people they know who receive respect are the guys with guns and cash. Consequently, there is a very real danger that such neighbourhoods will continue to drift even further as a location for drug trade.
With the help of the Dutch government, Amsterdam has developed a Masterplan for these areas: together with housing corporations, schools, citizens organisations and the private sector, we will turn the situation in these neighbourhoods around.
But we know this may take two decades.
In the meantime, our dear minister is doing everything she can to get us more detectives and community police.
Also, we have started a very promising pilot with a community court in one of these neighbourhoods.
I am a firm believer in restorative justice for non-violent crime and I am eager to learn from the experiences you may have in your countries.
Now we have talk about money.
Let me ask you a question: has anyone seen the TV-series The Wire? It is all about how Baltimore society is completely consumed by the illegal drugs economy.
Let me quote one of the characters, detective Freamon:
“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers, but you start to follow the money, you don’t know where the F*** it’s gonna take you.”
We have to go after the money! The money pays organised crime’s foot soldiers and threatens to corrupt our businesses and governments.
I would like to propose here that European governments make cities full partner in the national and international chains against money laundering.
The money laundering almost always takes plays in cities.
Let me give you an example. During the COVID-lockdowns are historic city centre was completely empty. Especially the usually over crowded red light district with its many tourist shops. I can assure you that many residents looked forward to these souvenir, ice cream and waffle shops to go out of business.
Almost none of them did.
What did happen is that in quite a short time a lot of them changed owners.
And none of the local police officers, business associations or government workers believes these were legitimate transactions.
But the city simply lacked the resources and sometimes the authority to pick up the signals and link them to banks, the tax office and other authorities.
We can change this. Together we can build a strong intelligence position.
We can form a united front, with national governments and financial institutions.
And we can close off ways for criminals to spend drug money.
Imagine what cities and banks can achieve by sharing information. Imagine what we can achieve by exchanging information with the Dutch government ’s Financial Intelligence Unit. The City of Amsterdam employs professional and knowledgeable experts on organised crime and illegal money flows.
We could be much more effective against organised crime if we had more powers.
Especially because we have a close-knit network throughout the city’s neighbourhoods that pick-up relevant signals. The banks have enormous amounts of information about money flows. Together with the prosecutors and the tax authorities we can close in on the key agents in money laundering, underground banking and other corrupt transactions. Oh, and let’s also put some radical legal restrictions on the use of large sums of cash. I can’t imagine legitimate people paying cash for a transaction of more than a thousand euros.
We have reason to believe crime organisations between different European cities maintain ties with each other. The authorities of Cities like Marseille, Antwerp, Milan, Berlin, Rotterdam and Amsterdam should also form a tight network against money laundering that exchanges information, traces and disrupts illegal money flows. Don’t you agree that such a network could be a strong partner of Europol and Eurojust, national and local law enforcement and prosecutors?
Thus, support, administrative instruments and funding from the national governments and the European Commission will be enormously fruitful investments.
Ladies and gentlemen,
People like Peter R. de Vries are precious, rare, but not alone.
All across Europe there are courageous journalists, lawyers and many others who are willing to stand up for the rule of law. Take for example the many Italian heroes who have given their lives fighting the mafia.
Fortunately, in most European countries, the rule of law is still strong and the people who are the pillars of our cherished system are still safe.
However, it is clear we cannot take that safety for granted.
It is clear that the old ways of fighting organised drug crime will not keep them and our societies safe in the long term.
Fortunately, there are alternative strategies available to us.
If regulating drugs, like we did with the Cocaine Factory, is really not an option, we must empower our cities.
And if we explore alternative strategies and empower our cities, I believe strongly that our countries will become safer.
I am convinced that in the future, people like Peter, Derk, Redouan and Mohammed will no longer have to die before their time.
Thank you so much for your attention.
I hope you have a fruitful conference and please enjoy your stay in Amsterdam!
[1]https://cannigma.com/where-cannabis-is-legal-in-europe/
[2] Gestoeld op theorie van Damian Zaitch, Willem Pompe Instituut verbonden aan UU.
[3] Trendbeeld politie 2022
[4] Europol https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/over-1-530-firearms-taken-streets-in-europol-coordinated-operation