Oguz H. from Tilburg (53) has to go to jail for 12 years for involvement in perhaps the largest coke laundry ever in the Netherlands, in Nijeveen, Drenthe. The court in Amsterdam pronounced that sentence on Thursday. Problem: Oguz H. disappeared from radar shortly after police raided the lab and has been missing since.
The lab rolled up in August 2020 – discovered in a riding school – was then described as the largest cocaine laundry ever found in the Netherlands. According to the Public Prosecution Service, the lab had such an enormous capacity that an annual yield would yield more than 2.1 billion euros.
In the short time it ran, it would have been good for daily turnovers of 3 to 5 million euros.
To smuggle cocaine, it is often dissolved in clothing or cardboard. In a laundry, those materials are ‘washed’ in an acidic solution. Due to the chemical reaction that occurs, the cocaine is released again as a solid.
22,000 kilos of cocaine
In the laundry were tens of thousands of liters of chemicals and about 100 kilograms of cocaine paste. During a raid in Apeldoorn, agents came across another 120,000 kilos of coal, of which 22,000 kilos contained cocaine.