A 33-year-old man from Bergen op Zoom was sentenced on appeal in 2020 to four years in prison for setting up and operating a large drug lab in Eext. This is one year less than that imposed by the court in Assen last year.
According to the court, the citizen of Brabant directed the co-defendants and maintained contacts with suppliers. The court draws the evidence from the many messages from the man’s PGP telephone. De Brabander’s lawyer felt that these messages had not been obtained legally and therefore should not serve as evidence. The higher courts disagree. The court finds that the 33-year-old has only been busy filling his own wallet and he was not concerned about the dangers that could arise for local residents.
There are indications in the police investigation that this was a large-scale and professional organization that operated nationally. De Brabander, in turn, was managed by unknown persons and would earn 10,000 euros per month. The court takes into account in the sentence that the Brabander did not have a high position within the organization. Two local residents (both 32 years old) are sentenced to three years in prison and two years in prison (of which six months are conditional).
A 22-year-old man from Bergen op Zoom transported the products to the shed in Eext. He was sentenced to two years in prison, of which eighteen months were suspended. The man was also sentenced to 240 hours of community service. He received an amount of 250 euros per trip and rented the cars in his name. The court in Assen sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison last year. But the court is not convinced that the man actually co-produced. His role is therefore estimated to be a lot smaller.
The tenant of the building, a 67-year-old real estate entrepreneur from Goes, has to serve a prison sentence of one and a half years. That is equal to his previous conviction in 2021. The court in Assen also imposed a fine of 20,000 euros on the man, but the court does not consider that necessary. The court does not believe that the man, in his own words, knew nothing about drug production. The higher judges also do not believe his story that he had to rent the property under threat.
The speed lab at the Vijzelweg in Eext was discovered in May 2020 after an anonymous tip. At the same time, the police received information about this via EncroChat messages. These are encrypted messages that are often used by criminals, because they think they are unobserved. The police have now managed to crack these messages. The lab in Eext had not yet produced drugs, but that does not make the matter any less serious, the court finds.
Producing drugs, such as amphetamine in this case, is a very serious criminal offense, the court finds. The transport and storage thereof also entail serious dangers. A fire can break out or things can explode, with all the consequences that entails. The waste from such a lab is invariably dumped illegally, which is very harmful to the environment. Drugs are bad for health and drug trafficking often goes hand in hand with serious crime.