If it is up to the Public Prosecution Service, the Eindhoven councilor Fatimzahra Chahim has to go to prison for money laundering for six months. She would have laundered money for three years from her partner’s criminal activities. A prison sentence of seven years has been demanded against her partner, Nabil N.. He is suspected of, among other things, money laundering, the trading of at least 130 kilos of cocaine and involvement in the transport of cocaine from the Dominican Republic to the Netherlands.
Fatimzahra Chahim has been in the Eindhoven city council since 2018. She was in fourth place for the VVD in the 2022 elections. Two years ago she left the group after disagreement. Then she continued as a one -man fraction. In the meantime she would no longer be employed, she said in court on Wednesday. “I am not doing well. I am put on non-active. I am labeled as a crook and I can no longer leave the street,” she says.
In 2019 she became friends with N., who was then stuck for drug possession. He often called her from prison, she visited him several times in 2020. Why he was stuck, says the councilor never had known. “He said it was for something small and I believed that. In my eyes there was a innocent person,” she says. After his release they got a relationship. A year later he registered at her address.
Encrypted messages
The police tracked N. thanks to encrypted messages he sent with accounts through the squatted Message Service Sky ECC. He started an account on 2 June 2020, one day after his release from prison. When the judge wonders out loud how that can be done so quickly, a long silence follows. Eventually n.: “I had received that account from someone”. Although he says he is not always the one who used the account. He would have regularly given the phone to someone he met in one shishalounge.
Many messages were sent about drug trafficking through his account. Photos of blocks of drugs, messages about prices and appointments to come and get money. The address of the councilor was mentioned by N. as a place to come and get drugs or money.
N. sketched several times in court the image that he is only an awkward fool. Messages about large amounts of cocaine? “That is all great, I did tough,” he said. Appointments about money amounts? “I wanted to belong.”
He admits that he wanted to sell drugs, but that it didn’t work. According to him, the times he actually sold cocaine can be counted on two hands. “I’m just a stumper. I can’t make it more beautiful than it is.”
In the encrypted messages, the import of cocaine was also discussed via the port of Antwerp. Several group exchange were created from the N. account. Among other things, the location and arrival times of the containers were discussed with drugs. But the suspect said he wasn’t smart enough for that either. “I really don’t know about that. I wasn’t,” he claimed.
According to the OM, it is really clear that N. himself made use of the encrypted messaging service. This is evident, among other things, from the password, which refers to his year of birth. The messages were regularly sent from the address of the Eindhoven councilor, where N. was often at the time. Furthermore, several messages can be linked to N., because his nickname and birthday were mentioned, among other things.
Moneytak
And then money laundering. Together with her partner, Eindhoven would have laundered money from the criminal activities of N., for example, they would have rebuilt her social rental home for more than 20,000 euros, while few payments can be linked to the renovation on paper. It also refers to expensive vacations, jewelry and luxury items. The value would not fit with the income of the couple. Certainly since N. lived from a benefit.
Messages that the couple sent to each other also shows that N. asked Fatimzahra several times from abroad to count cash and give amounts to people who would come to her door. According to them, it was about money that came from the trade in car parts that N. would do. The OM points to amounts that correspond to the value of kilos of cocaine.
The OM also pointed to hundreds of money deposits and recordings of the council member’s account. She denied something to do with money laundering on Wednesday. “I have always worked hard myself, but I am now being destroyed because of my partner choice. He has never contributed to our livelihood,” she says. N. sketches the same image. He says to the judges: “You think they are one Golddigger Is, but it’s the other way around. I have no money, I am the Golddigger. “
The court will rule on April 9.