Moroccan mafia


The Moroccan mafia is a collection of criminal organisations that are primarily made up of people of Moroccan descent. These organisations are specialized in trafficking large quantities of cocaine and synthetic drugs through Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, from where it is distributed to the rest of the European continent, thus being one of the most dominant participants in the European drug trade.
In broader terms of Moroccan organized crime, this also includes northern Moroccan hash kingpins and southern Moroccan traffickers who play a key-role in the African drug trade, as well as in human trafficking, arms trafficking and the trafficking of contraband such as cigarettes and alcohol, although they are seen as a separate entity from the Mocro Maffia who are mostly active in the northern part of Morocco and Europe.
Moroccan criminal networks in Europe have mainly been active since the 1990s, and consist mostly of Belgian and Dutch citizens with a Moroccan immigrant background. These criminal networks have privileged relationships with Colombian and Mexican cartels, and they often import drugs into Europe through the harbours of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Algeciras.
The Moroccan mafia does not, however, include Moroccan Jewish crime families such as the Abergil crime family as well as the Abutbul and Domrani clans, who are rather considered to be a part of the Israeli mafia. That said, Moroccan-Israeli mafia clans are known for having collaborated closely together with the Mocro Maffia in the Netherlands and Belgium, especially in the worldwide distribution of synthetic drugs such as MDMA. This is mostly due to the fact that the Netherlands is the largest producer of MDMA and amphetamines in the world.

Overview

In 2012 a large shipment of cocaine was stolen by the Turtle clan in the Port of Antwerp. This eventually led to a gang war amongst multiple criminal organisations which the Dutch and Belgian media outlets described as the Mocro-War.
From this point on, many people from Dutch- and Belgian-Moroccan descent were killed in various shootings across Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Morocco and Suriname. Ridouan Taghi became a prominent figure within the Moroccan mafia, who had a large share in the European cocaine trade, and he was also responsible for a lot of gangland killings across Europe. He is currently jailed in a maximum security prison in the Netherlands awaiting his trial. His right-hand man Saïd Razzouki was arrested in Bogotá, Colombia, extradited to the Netherlands and in February, 2024, was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in ten murders.
In Antwerp, the term Borgerokko-Maffia is often used due to the large impact of the illegal economy in the district of Borgerhout. The trade of this illegal economy has its origins in the Moroccan street gangs of Antwerp and Amsterdam, which is described in the 2014 published book Borgerokko Maffia by Raf Sauviller, and also in the book Mocro Maffia by criminologist Martijn Schrijver.
The Moroccan mafia has appeared in most of the large Belgian and Dutch cities including Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Almere. In the mid-2010s, criminal organisations were also established in southern Spain, but also in the rest of Europe, South America and more recently in the United Arab Emirates. According to the Dutch investigator Pieter Tops, the Moroccan mafia gains a revenue of around 20 billion euros a year in the Netherlands alone.
In September 2019, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was trying to convince the Dutch government to launch an attack on drug traffickers. He also pleaded for a black list of the most dangerous criminal organisations that were operating on Dutch soil. This statement came right after the beheading of Nabil Amzieb, the attacks on the headquarters of Dutch news outlets De Telegraaf and Panorama, and the murders on journalist Martin Kok and lawyer Derk Wiersum,
On 6 July 2021, the Dutch crime journalist Peter R. de Vries was shot, right after he left the studio of RTL Boulevard in Amsterdam, where he had appeared as a guest on the show. De Vries died more than a week later on 15 July 2021, as a result of the shooting. It is still unclear who gave the order of the shooting, but Dutch authorities suspect the organisation of Taghi. de Vries acted as a close confidant to Nabil B., a crown witness in the Marengo trial against the organisation of Taghi, whose brother, alongside his lawyer Derk Wiersum were assassinated on the orders of Taghi's organisation.

Etymology

  • Mocro maffia: The name "Mocro maffia" is given by the Dutch-speaking authorities in the Netherlands and Belgium, who refer to Moroccan criminal organizations operating in the Benelux. The term was made public by author Martijn Schrijver in 2013, following the publication of his book Mocro Maffia, released in 2014. However, the term "Mocro" has existed since the 1990s, and is a Moroccan-Dutch slang term that describes someone with a Moroccan immigrant background, in both Belgium and the Netherlands. The term "Mocro Maffia" does not make a distinction between the various organizations that rival each other, but instead describes a network of all Moroccan criminal organizations that are active in the Benelux. Although the majority of members are of Moroccan descent, there are also some members who are from Dutch, Antillean or Surinamese background.
  • Mocro-oorlog or Mocro-War ': The name by which the media and journalists refer to the Mocro mafia conflict that began in 2012.
  • Borgerokko Maffia': The name by which politicians, media outlets, and journalists refer to the Moroccan criminal networks that are active in Antwerp. The term was adopted by the Belgian writer Raf Sauviller in his book Borgerokko Maffia, which was released in 2017. The term quickly appeared on the front pages of Belgian newspapers.

    Origins and context

History (1960–1995)

have migrated in large waves to the Benelux, who were invited to these countries as guest workers. This dense and rather late emigration in the 1960s and 1970s eventually never stopped, and many of the invited guest workers decided to build a new life in the Benelux instead. Most of these Moroccan immigrants came from the Rif region, which is one of the poorest regions in all of Morocco. The Rif region was, and still is a very rural and little urbanised area, which had very few schools for an excessive time, whether in Arabic or French. This Mediterranean peasant and mountain society is quite comparable to other Mediterranean regions like Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria and the Aurès. It is characterised by very strong community relationships, a spirit of silence and self-governance. This mountainous region has always stayed somewhat uncontrollable. After decolonization, more than tens of thousands of Riffians lost their jobs in the vineyards and farms of Morocco and Algeria. Afterward, this process continued, as if from the 1970s and onwards, many of these migrated Riffians have lost their jobs in the European mines and steel industry as well. Since then this workforce has converted on a massive scale into different ways of commerce and businesses, both legal and illegal, with the illegal side, in particular, being the smuggling of cannabis. The earned money was reinvested in cafes, small businesses and real estate in Morocco. The ones who gained some wealth, reinvested into the economy around the Costa del Sol region in southern Spain. The Riffian diaspora has thus spread its economic system throughout Europe. During the 1960s, Belgium and the Netherlands, unlike other countries in Western Europe, had no North African colonial past, welcomed massive Moroccan immigration from northern Morocco to work in the mines, iron and steel industry in Wallonia. Afterward, this process continued in Flanders and the Netherlands, in the midst of an economic boom. The drug trade eventually followed these communities in exile, from Morocco to the Netherlands, through Spain, France, and Belgium.
During the 1980s, De Pijp and Bos en Lommer districts located in Amsterdam, housed the most Moroccan immigrants. During this period, many Dutch-Moroccans saw this as an opportunity to export hashish from the Ketama mountains in Morocco to the Netherlands, often aboard their old vehicles such as Mercedes S-Class cars. It was around this time in the mid-1980s that the modern mafia structures started to evolve. These trafficking businesses eventually represented a 10 to 12 billion-dollar revenue in 40 years. The traffickers were used to crossing borders, carrying weapons, and they were known in Morocco to be very violent. The Moroccan state has abandoned and neglected the Rif region for many years by refusing to invest in the infrastructure, which has prompted most Moroccans from cities like Al Hoceïma and Nador to devote themselves entirely to the production of Hashish. In the 1980s, cocaine gained a lot of popularity. These were also the years when Dutch Penose crime syndicates were inspiring the Moroccan community to enter the hard drug business, which would make them eventually more money than hashish.

Birth of international drug networks (1995–2006)

During the 1990s, many drug kingpins in South America preferred to operate their smuggling businesses through West-African countries like Ghana and Senegal, due to the absence of customs controls in the most important ports of these countries. Over time, South American cartels have created trafficking routes through North Africa for export to Europe. Morocco has an important strategic geographical placement and also a large diaspora in the most important countries of Europe, which is what eventually has set them apart from other countries on the African continent. While in Morocco the Rif mountains and port cities like Tangier or Tétouan were often counted on for the production and trafficking of drugs, in Europe, Antwerp became the European trafficking hub alongside Spain. With Antwerp and its Port, the whole of Belgium also became a geographic hub for drug export. Importation of goods and drug trafficking became inseparable over time, and these activities compensated for the layoffs that affected miners, steelworkers and textile workers on a massive scale. In this context, the old manners, habits, and the traditional codes of conduct, honor, justice, and distrust in authority were transplanted in the districts of Brussels, Amsterdam and Antwerp, where these communities were able to grow significantly, notably with the establishment of a friendly relationship with the Dutch Penose, at that time amongst some of the largest criminal organizations in Europe. Whether justified or not, the Belgian and Dutch authorities characterized these communities by their "social isolation" and by a "more aggressively tribal culture" which distinguished them from other immigrant communities.
During the 1990s, the crime rates would increase in certain districts of Amsterdam. As a result of this, a large number of native Dutch people decided to leave these neighborhoods to live somewhere else in the suburbs or the countryside, where it was usually a lot more calmer and serene. In 1995, a petition was set up in certain neighborhoods to accommodate Moroccan immigrants outside of the city without success. Certain places like the Diamantbuurt in the district of De Pijp very rapidly gained a negative reputation due to the increase of criminality.