Martijn Reuvers is a bit shocked by his own words. The project leader just let slip: “With a normal criminal investigation you would not so quickly put a science fiction writer at the table.”
Really and truly? The Multidisciplinary Intervention Team (MIT), the club that is to become the answer to the subversive organized crime in the Netherlands, has its light on the authors of futuristic books?
“Not yet,” says Reuvers. “But it’s on my wish list.”
The spokesman on the other side of the table interrupts him: “Science fiction writer is a metaphor, right? You mean to say that we bring in special people here?”
Reuvers, however, did not mean it metaphorically, but literally. In the fight against the ever increasing (drug) crime, MIT, the showpiece of outgoing minister Ferd Grapperhaus (Justice and Security, CDA), wants to break new ground. An smart war on crime, as Reuvers calls it. A science fiction writer can offer new insights – for example by developing scenarios about what the drug trade will look like twenty years from now.
“We need people that you might not immediately think of,” adds Reuvers’ colleague Susan Lasschuit-Lavalaye. “Exotics, I call them.” She has been working for the police for 25 years, but Reuvers is a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Netherlands Army. Another MIT employee was a correspondent in South America for many years. “You can come and work here too,” says Reuvers teasingly.
Unpacked boxes
The Multidisciplinary Intervention Team is a collaboration of six government services, located at the police station of the fortified town of Gorinchem. The six logos already adorn the frosted glass doors: Police, Public Prosecution Service, Customs, Tax Authorities, FIOD, Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. Inside, the unpacked boxes of computer equipment show that MIT is still in the making. When full war strength (four hundred fte) has been reached, the team will have to move to another location in the middle of the Netherlands.
The men and women who already work at MIT are enthusiastic about what motivates them. The same name is always mentioned: Derk Wiersum. On September 18, 2019, the Amsterdam lawyer was shot dead in front of his house. The brutal liquidation shook the Dutch legal order to its foundations: never before had a ‘toga wearer’ become the target of the drug mafia. Intelligence specialist Hermen Sterrenburg, from the Amsterdam police, was involved in both the criminal investigation and the massive operation to bring dozens of participants in the Marengo trial against top criminal Ridouan Taghi under stricter surveillance. Shortly afterwards, he was asked to join MIT. “Then I immediately dropped everything from my hands. I think this work is so necessary.”
Within weeks of Wiersum’s murder, Grapperhaus announced a “broad offensive against organized subversive crime” (BOTOC). The letter that the minister sent to the House of Representatives also announced the establishment of MIT: “an advanced national, flexible, multidisciplinary intervention team”, according to the letter, “that focuses on disrupting the business processes of criminal leaders and their networks”.
The minister’s letter immediately caused confusion about what exactly MIT is and should do. Some media soon spoke of ‘the Dutch DEA’ (the American drug control agency) or a Dutch ‘FBI’ – as if MIT were to become some kind of ‘super police’. Then came criticism. During a round table discussion in the House of Representatives, Andy Kraag, the head of the National Criminal Investigation Service, warned of “overlaps and lack of clarity with regard to the existing investigation”. Cyrille Finaut, eminence grise of Dutch criminology, expressed less diplomacy, calling MIT “the dumbest plan in the history of the Dutch police.”
Also read: Strong criticism within police on new team against serious crime
‘No new investigative service’
At MIT, they take the criticism to heart, says Chaira Ament, a member of the ‘program team’ that is in charge of day-to-day management. “I have quite a thick skin myself, but I think it’s a shame for the people who work here with heart and soul.” According to Ament (25 years of experience as a prosecutor), the criticism is motivated by a wrong image of MIT: “We have to do our very best to make people understand that we are not a new investigative service. We are not going to pick up the new Taghi. We are going to make sure that there is no new Taghi.”
If they’re trying to explain at MIT how they’re going to do that, you’ll have to pay close attention, because the team has developed its own terminology for the crime-fighting of the future. MIT doesn’t ‘run investigations’, it looks at the whole ‘criminal system’ – not just the underworld, but the legal structures in the upper world that are corrupted with criminal money: from the notary drafting a false deed to the trust office in the Virgin Islands that hides criminal companies from view.
Once the ‘criminal system’ has been mapped out, MIT can choose from a broad ‘palette’ of ‘interventions’ from the six government departments that make up MIT. This can involve investigation and arrest, but it can also be something completely different: annoying checks by the tax inspector, the withdrawal of a permit, or information to port staff about recognizing criminal behaviour. “In addition to fighting incidents, we must move more towards disrupting the criminal system,” says Robert Korsman, a tightly dressed thirty-something who comes from the FIOD.
Korsman previously worked for the Hit And Run Cargo team (HARC), a partnership of the police, the Public Prosecution Service, FIOD and customs to tackle drug smuggling in the port of Rotterdam. The joint approach has resulted in many drug seizures, but Korsman sometimes had the feeling that the mop with the tap was open. Now he wants to help turn off the tap, “so that the water doesn’t get over the baseboards a bit”.
It is not only Korsman who believes that this is possible. Army officer Martijn Reuvers talks about the disruption of the ‘criminal system’ as about a military operation, in which the focus must be on the ‘weak spots’ of the ‘adversary’. So-called ‘MIT labs’ are thinking about how best to combat criminal ‘phenomena’ (such as money laundering). “We first look at what is already happening to tackle undermining,” says Tom Zuidam – from the Tax and Customs Administration. “What works and what doesn’t? And what could we supplement?”
“We keep asking ourselves: how can we have an effect?” says Susan Lasschuit-Lavalaye. “So an effect does not necessarily have to be: an arrest or the seizure of a batch of drugs.”
Legal Restrictions
In studying the ‘criminal system’, MIT will – for the first time – use vast amounts of data from the six government departments: from police intelligence to bank details that can be viewed by the FIOD. Intelligence specialist Sterrenburg and Frido Koolstra, from the High Tech Crime Team of the National Criminal Investigation Department, are building a ‘multidisciplinary data warehouse‘. At the moment, MIT is still encountering all sorts of limitations. “We are in different legal and privacy domains,” explains manager Monique Mos. Not all information can be shared just like that. “In order to remove those obstacles, we will need new legislation in the long term.”
A team that sits on top of the data from six government departments and that can deploy a ‘broad palette’ of powers, without concrete suspicion and a criminal investigation: MIT’s future prospects sometimes have Orwellian features. Mos understands that: „We have therefore argued that there should be a review committee [analoog aan de CTIVD, de waakhond van de inlichtingendiensten] who, solicited and unsolicited, checks whether everything we do here is permitted.” At the moment, the Department of Justice and Security is working on legislation that defines the exact powers for the acquisition and processing of information by MIT. The necessary folds will also have to be ironed out in the House of Representatives, because there are still many questions about MIT within the permanent House Committee of Justice.
From time to time, chairperson Chaira Ament receives unsolicited advice from former colleagues. “Like: dude, just put on a jacket with ‘MIT’ on it and kick in a few doors, then you’ll immediately be positive in the newspaper.” But that’s exactly what they don’t want to do at MIT. MIT mainly wants to play a role in the background. Maybe not so sexy, says Monique Mos, but no less useful for that. She remembers the time when as a prosecutor she was chasing suspects of human trafficking. Getting a conviction was nice. “But sometimes it was much more effective if a mayor closed a number of prostitution buildings for a few months.”
Ament nods in agreement. “We have all found that criminal law is not always the answer. I sometimes say: if we do our job really well, you won’t see anything at all from MIT.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 25, 2021
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