A rolled up Groningen drug network is said to have traded in hard and soft drugs professionally, organized and on an international scale for a long time. Justice is demanding years of imprisonment on Tuesday against ‘big fish’, who probably raked in millions of euros in a few months.
Underground safes to hide drugs in, test drives to try out German border controls and suspects still missing. The trial against a Veendammer (56), two Groningen residents (33 and 29) and a missing Stadjer who left for Spain (32), involves more than ordinary drug trafficking in the city and surroundings.
“This is a network in Groningen that took on all facets of international drug trafficking,” the public prosecutor described in court on Tuesday. “The suspects did everything. From purchasing, contact with producers, testing drugs, temporary storage, selling them up to and including transport across the border.”
2 million euros with five drug shipments
The kilos will fly through the courtroom on Tuesday. Reportedly, the Groningen alleged cooperation exported about 200 kilos of hard drugs to Norway and Germany, including 40,000 ecstasy pills and 60 kilos of speed. More than 800 kilos of weed and hashish were also imported from Spain for the domestic market. According to the Public Prosecution Service, 2 million euros must have been earned with five drug transports.
They surfaced from the now infamous hack of encrypted messaging service EncroChat, by the French police in 2020. Previously, criminal cases always had to be formed around suspects. With the hacking of the chat platform, the judiciary has since been looking for suspects in offenses that have come to light in the message traffic. This is also the case in Groningen.
EncroChat users with aliases like “MisterGhostXXX,” “Dimili,” or “Squidblazer” sometimes reported almost live on environmental developments. But for the matter in court, “who is behind those accounts?” the police tried not only to link phone records to the suspects, but also to verify factual information from the messages in the real world.
Vaults in the ground in a building in Veendam
In the chats, for example, a ‘garage’ near Veendam was mentioned. The detectives also found a user who saved the number of ‘Dimili’ in his encrypted telephone under the name ‘Dimili Veendam’ and a statement from a driver who designated the building of the 56-year-old Veendammer as a drug storage facility.
During a raid, the man was arrested and officers found the underground storage rooms in an annex, but also cars with hidden compartments that are more often found in drug transports. How does the suspect himself look at it? “Shut up,” he replies constantly. It is not the first time that he has faced judges for such offenses. In France he received a year and a half in prison for smuggling and in 2021 the court ruled that he must pay back 150,000 euros in criminally earned weed money.
“These were not players in the margins”
Two Groningen residents, one of whom still resides in Spain, were above the Veendammer in the hierarchy, according to justice. They too can be linked to chat traffic about the international drug trade. ,,These were not players in the margins”, says the officer. ,, They probably also acted longer than the few months they are now suspected of. Buried safes are not for single use.”
The youngest Groninger is the only one who does want to say something about his role. He doesn’t talk about others. The 29-year-old suspect says he took about 20 kilos of speed and then brought it away. “I didn’t think about what was going to happen. I did it for a small fee.” When he unloaded weed from a truck at a storage location in Ermelo in May 2020, he fled just in time when officers arrived.
‘They have not stopped, they have been discovered’
For the Public Prosecution Service, the number of kilos is not decisive in this case. ,,For us it is about the organization, not about comparing kilos of drugs with other things. We acted professionally here, like a well-oiled machine. The suspects were all consciously involved and have not stopped, but have been discovered.”
The man who is a fugitive is demanded 8 years as leader of the alleged organization. The Groningen man will demand a prison sentence of 7 years as a right-hand man. The Veendammer hears five years as a controller of the cars and drivers and the other Stadjer for his much smaller role 3 years in prison. The lawyers will speak on Friday.
The court has until September 8 to make a ruling.