A Dutch court has given drug trafficking pioneer Ridouan Taghi a life imprisonment. Despite Taghi’s involvement in establishing a global network for bringing in drugs, his conviction will have minimal impact on the flow of cocaine into Europe.
Dutch-Moroccan Taghi and two others were convicted on February 27 for five murders, two attempted murders, and planning several other killings.
The Marengo trial, which involved 16 defendants including Taghi, lasted six years and was unprecedented in size and duration for the Netherlands. Along with the three life sentences, 13 co-conspirators received prison terms ranging from two to 29 years.
While Taghi had long been a suspect in cocaine trafficking, the Dutch case primarily focused on a series of murders connected to a wave of violent retaliatory killings in the Dutch underworld that began in 2012 when a cocaine shipment did not reach the port of Antwerp.
The Cocaine Pipeline to Europe
The five murders addressed in the trial occurred in 2015 and 2016 across the Netherlands. Taghi ordered the killings of Ronald Bakker and Samuel Erraghib because he believed they were providing information to the authorities. One victim, Ranko Scekic, had previously worked as a hitman for Taghi and was murdered after testifying against him.
Journalist Martin Kok, with a criminal history, was killed for writing about Taghi, using criminal sources for insider information. The fifth victim, Hakim Changachi, was mistakenly killed as Taghi’s assassins targeted the wrong person. This last murder led Nabil B., an associate of Taghi, to testify against him in exchange for a reduced sentence.
In retaliation, Taghi reportedly ordered three additional murders after the Marengo trial had begun. These attacks on civilians unaffiliated with crime shocked the usually peaceful Netherlands. Nabil B.’s brother Redouan was killed on March 29, 2018, at his Amsterdam office. A year and a half later, on September 18, 2019, hitmen murdered Nabil B.’s lawyer Derk Wiersum. On July 6, 2021, Peter R. de Vries, a well-known journalist and confidant of Nabil B. in the Marengo trial, was shot after leaving a TV studio in Amsterdam and later died.
These three murders are currently under separate ongoing trials.
InSight Crime Analysis
Despite Taghi and some of his top associates being sentenced, the cocaine trafficking system he built remains intact, and the cocaine trade in Europe continues to expand.
Taghi initially began his criminal career by selling hashish on the street before advancing to importing the drug in bulk from Morocco. His hashish smuggling operation evolved into a drug trafficking empire when he transitioned to trafficking cocaine around 2008.
Over the next 15 years, cocaine trafficking to Europe through the Netherlands surged, with the country becoming a key distribution point for the rest of the continent.
During his peak, Taghi and his associates brought in an estimated one-third of all the cocaine entering the Netherlands each year — roughly 33 tons — via the Rotterdam port, according to police records accessed by the Dutch Newspaper Algemeen Dagblad in 2019.
Seizures in the Netherlands rose from about 10 tons of cocaine annually between 2008 and 2010 to 60 tons in 2023. During the same time, coca cultivation in South America increased, while in the Netherlands the retail price stayed fairly stable, and cocaine purity and consumption increased.
Partnerships were crucial to Taghi’s success.
“We live in a globalized world … It is nearly impossible to run [organized crime operations] within an ethnic group because you play on a transnational field” Yarin Eski, criminologist and associate professor in Public Administration at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam said.
On the distribution side, Taghi collaborated with some of Europe’s biggest traffickers, including the Italian Camorra mafia and the Irish Kinahan crime group. Together, they formed a network, often referred to as a “supercartel,” that benefited from the contacts of each associate.
“The Netherlands as a location is important, but it’s not so much Dutch groups or Belgian groups,” Thomas Pietschmann, research officer at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told InSight Crime. “There are a lot of other groups who just use the territory and infrastructure of these two countries.”
Was a Super Cartel Really Controlling Europe’s Drug Trade?
Taghi also had strong connections on the supply side. His second-in-command, Said Razzouki, who was also convicted to a life sentence, lived in the outskirts of Medellín, Colombia for years. There, Razzouki organized the export of cocaine to Europe. He allegedly bought cocaine from the Gaitanistas (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC). Colombian authorities arrested Razzouki in 2020 and extradited him the following year.
Several other members of Taghi’s network were arrested in Latin America and the Caribbean and Suriname, including the alleged number three, Mao Romo, who was also convicted to life for the murders in the Marengo trial.
But the infrastructure that Taghi helped create has continued to import cocaine in greater quantities even after the arrests and convictions of Taghi and others in his organization.
“What really has been the most important trend in Europe over the last few years was the massive increase in cocaine,” Pietschmann said.