Mob-style killings shock Netherlands into fighting descent into ‘narco state’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... arco-stateSun 3 Jul 2022
Journalists and lawyers under protection or murdered on the streets, court hearings guarded by the army, witness statements anonymised, and billions in dirty drug money that leaches through society, corrupting as it goes.
This is the Netherlands, where these facts have now inspired a crackdown pitting some €500m a year against a level of organised crime that politicians fear is increasingly “undermining” public order.
The mayors of Amsterdam and Rotterdam are warning of a “culture of crime and violence that is gradually acquiring Italian traits”, with record amounts of intercepted drugs at the port of Rotterdam, extreme violence that often kills the wrong target, and €15bn to €30bn a year laundered into property, cannabis “coffee shops”, tourism and bars. Allegations that the country, better known for its tolerance and fiscal frugality, has the characteristics of a “narco state 2.0” are now being taken extremely seriously.
“We will never have as much money as the criminals opposite us, but there has never before been as much structural money to tackle them, from prevention to disrupting earning models, punishing people and protecting those on the frontline,” justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius said in parliament.
“Those amounts of cash can only be made if the underworld is infiltrating the legitimate world and nesting there: in streets of shops, business parks, our estate agents and lawyers,” she said.