He is not there, the main suspect in an extensive investigation into a series of drug labs where, according to the Public Prosecution Service, the highly addictive hard drug crystal meth was produced. In the Den Bosch court, everyone involved in the case knows that it concerns a 38-year-old Mexican who appears in the file under a nickname: Pablo Ice-cobar. In the pun, the name of infamous Colombian cocaine lord Pablo Escobar comes together with “ice,” American slang for crystal meth.
According to justice, this Pablo Ice cobar is the main suspect in the criminal case ’26Inn’, which the court will consider during an interim hearing on Wednesday. Four co-defendants of Ice-cobar – a Colombian woman and three men from Colombia, Mexico and the Netherlands – were present in Den Bosch on Wednesday, either physically or via a video link. The Public Prosecution Service wants to extend the pre-trial detention of the suspects, who were arrested in July, because the investigation has not yet been completed. Pablo Ice-cobar is not here because his pre-trial detention is still running until December. Justice sees the Mexican, who was handed over from Spain in September, as the pivot behind four meth laboratories dismantled in the Netherlands.
500,000 euros per kilo
The Netherlands is playing an increasingly prominent role in the production of crystal meth, according to the National Police and Europol. In five years, the number of decommissioned meth labs has grown rapidly, according to police figures, from 2 labs in 2016 to 32 in 2020, a figure that has been magnified by the successful decommissioning of Encrochat, a seller of cryptophones popular in the US. the underworld. In the first six months of this year, 10 meth labs were discovered.
The drug, which users refer to as ‘tina’, ‘ice’ and ‘shabu’, is almost entirely intended for export. “The use in the Netherlands is limited, but crystal meth is the largest growth market among producers,” says Andy Kraag, head of the National Criminal Investigation Service. This is not surprising from a criminal perspective: the drug is extremely lucrative. More is made with it than with the production of ecstasy or the smuggling of cocaine.
According to Kraag, Dutch criminals work together with Mexicans and import their raw materials from China. “On the basis of information from the criminal environment, we estimate that the average cost of a kilo of meth in the Netherlands is 2,500 euros. The same kilo of meth can be sold here for 7,500 euros. That margin of 5,000 euros per kilo is ten times higher than with the production of ecstasy.”
The real profit comes after that, says Kraag. “On the streets in Australia, the price for a kilo of meth is more than 300,000 euros per kilo and in the Japanese capital Tokyo, meth is worth an average of 500,000 euros per kilo,” said Kraag. Given those street prices, 1 kilo of crystal meth produced in the Netherlands is worth twenty to thirty times more for smugglers. Smuggling entails expenses, but even then, more is earned on meth than on cocaine per kilo. “The financial incentive for criminal groups to produce meth is enormous.”
Also read: Mexican cartels mine the Netherlands to cook ‘crystal meth’
A spokesman for the Australian police confirms this statement: “Australian drug users are willing to pay significantly higher prices for illegal drugs such as methamphetamine. That makes Australia an attractive market, also for crime groups from Europe.”
The facts on the charges in the criminal case 26Inn reflect the spectacular rise of meth production in the Netherlands. In May of 2019, the police discovered a lab in the hold of a cargo ship in the harbor of Moerdijk in Brabant. When the police invade the ship, it turns out that a booby trap has been placed that starts pumping water into the ship. This cannot hide the fact that a large professional meth laboratory has been set up. The four suspects found – three Mexicans and a Dutchman – have since been convicted.
Exactly one year later, in May 2020, a meth lab was found in a farm in the Gelderse hamlet of Achter-Drempt. This is also a professionally set up lab where crystal meth was produced on a large scale over a longer period of time: there was a supply of meth and mercury was found in the ground and the groundwater was found to be contaminated. In this case too, the suspects found – an American, a Colombian and a Mexican – were convicted in the first instance.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the third lab in which the Ice-cobar group is involved was in a villa in Willemsoord, a hamlet located on the border of Overijssel and Friesland. This lab, like the lab in Achter-Drempt, was discovered thanks to the Encrochat hack. Messages from two as yet unknown persons led to the villa and the 65-year-old resident was arrested. Raw materials were found here that could be used to produce a large amount of crystal meth.
The discovery of a fourth production location, more than a year later in a shed on the Meinderswijk floodplain near Arnhem, shows that the group has continued as usual despite all the setbacks. This time, it’s not decrypted messaging, but an overheard phone call that reveals the lab’s location. In the shed, the police arrest a 34-year-old man with a Swedish passport. 600 kilos of meth are also found. According to Kraag’s calculation, it is worth approximately 4.5 million in the Netherlands. On the street in Australia that is 180 million. The police do not know exactly how this astronomical increase in value is distributed among the groups involved, but the producers in the Netherlands will probably share it.
Breaking Bad
Crystal meth is another name for the substance methamphetamine. Users become energetic, confident and awake, they feel no fatigue and no hunger – according to the Trimbos Institute. The use of crystal meth in the Netherlands is negligible and mainly takes place during sex parties. The drug is only known to the general public in the Netherlands thanks to the successful netflix series Breaking Bad. There are millions of users abroad, the majority in America, Asia and Australia.
Dutch exports mainly focus on Australia, says Kraag. And that is partly thanks to Task Force Blaze and Operation Kragle, with the Australians and Chinese joining forces to tackle crystal meth exports from China to Australia. “When the Chinese intervened harshly there, meth producers looked for another production location and the Netherlands came into the picture,” says Kraag. “Because Dutch producers have been making ecstasy for the Australian market for decades, the smuggling routes are already there.”
As is also noticeable in the 26Inn case, the production of crystal meth – unlike, for example, ecstasy – is not a national matter. Thanks to their experience that Mexicans have gained in serving the American market, Mexicans are considered the best producers worldwide. „Crystal meth made by Dutch chefs is much less pure: they call it Baby Ice”, says Collar. The recipe for the good stuff, really long and clean meth crystals, is in Mexican hands and they’re not giving it away. That is why we so often find Mexican chefs in Dutch labs.”
It is not surprising that Mexicans such as Pablo Ice-cobar end up in the Netherlands. Europol describes the Netherlands as the center of synthetic drug production in Europe. The knowledge about the large-scale production and smuggling of ecstasy makes the Netherlands attractive for crystal meth. The raw materials are available and an ecstasy lab can be made suitable for the production of crystal meth with some minor adjustments and a few hundred euros worth of equipment.
Also read: Crystal meth in the Netherlands: freelancers are building drug labs from the ground
The organization of the group of suspects around Pablo Ice-cobar is very similar to a group previously uncovered in an investigation into the Chilean Marko C. from Amsterdam. These are groups of suspects who operate as criminal freelancers, they all have their own role in the dynamic production process. For example, laboratories are regularly moved, which prevents rapid discovery, but the owner of such a lab also often works for several clients. In addition, scouts are active who travel through the country to find suitable locations. “One arranges locations, the other is responsible for the lab setup, a third has raw materials, and the fourth has contact with chefs who are often flown in from Mexico or another Latin American country,” says Kraag.
Dutch and Mexicans need each other right now
Max Daniel Police
The National Police Unit has derived a business model based on data obtained during the dismantling of Encrochat and Sky, says Kraag. „We distinguish seven steps: from acquiring the precursors [(illegale grondstoffen] to the dumping of waste and the sale of the end product.”
These groups are controlled by so-called brokers, the detective said. The 38-year-old Pablo Ice cobar, who uses his nickname to communicate via Ecrochat and SkyEcc, is such a broker according to the justice system: the one who manages the criminal self-employed and brings all steps in the production process together.
Violent Conflict
In the field of cocaine trade and ecstasy, the Netherlands has played a leading role internationally for years. And the police are very concerned that crystal meth production in the Netherlands will continue to grow, says Max Daniel, who is responsible for combating synthetic drugs within the police force management team. All the more so because the meth production is linked to both Mexican and Chinese criminal organizations and has the potential to lead to violent conflict.
In the criminal environment, the story goes that Chinese triads play an important role in the production of meth in the Netherlands. Daniel knows that story. “We know that the main precursors come from China. And we also receive signals from the criminal circuit that everyone is afraid of criminal groups from China. It is a separate battle, they operate much more emphatically under the radar. We have not established that the criminal groups from China are active in this area in the Netherlands. What we don’t know is whether it’s because they’re not here or because people in the environment are so wary of them that no one dares to talk about them.”
According to Kraag and Daniel, there is currently no evidence that Mexican cartels are settling here. But almost every Mexican who gets involved in crystal meth production here is affiliated with a cartel, Daniel says. “Just like with the old Italian mafia, he pays a contribution and gets his back for that.”
And that is precisely where the concern lies with the police, says Daniel. “The Dutch and the Mexicans need each other at the moment. But the Mexicans have a reputation for wanting to take over a market. For example, they pushed the Colombians out of cocaine smuggling into the United States. Suppose something similar happens here. What then?”
Another real scenario is that at some point a Dutch group unravels the Mexicans’ meth recipe. According to Kraag, you also get a competition model instead of a collaboration model. “That almost always leads to an escalation of violence.”
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