The Amsterdam professional criminal Mink Kok was arrested last Thursday in Lebanon at the request of the Dutch authorities, together with a 41-year-old co-defendant. The Public Prosecution Service has asked for Kok and the co-defendant to be surrendered to the Netherlands. According to insiders, the 41-year-old man is Kok’s son-in-law and a suspected member of the network of Ridouan Taghi, the main suspect in the Marengo case.
In a press release, the Public Prosecution Service states that Kok is suspected of involvement in drug smuggling on the basis of analyzes of crypto communication. This includes a consignment of cocaine that was intercepted in the port of Antwerp in 2021. The 41-year-old co-defendant is accused of involvement in two cocaine transports.
The arrest of Mink Kok and his son-in-law fits in with a strategy of the National Police Unit that focuses on breaking through criminal power structures. This approach, in which the National Unit works closely with the National Public Prosecutor’s Office, was tightened up after the violent death of Peter R. de Vries in July of 2021. This approach uses decrypted messages that have been captured from several providers. of crypto communications that have been dismantled by the police.
Mink Kok, now 60, is a veteran of the criminal environment who already played a prominent role in the trade in hashish, cocaine and weapons in the 1990s. He also played a role in the infamous IRT affair in the early 1990s in which the investigation corrupted itself by making deals with criminals. Kok has been convicted several times for drugs and arms trafficking. He served his last sentence in Lebanon where he was sentenced in 2013 to eight years in prison for cocaine smuggling.
Since then, he has not returned to the Netherlands because his passport has expired and the Dutch authorities refuse to renew it. Kok is of Willem Holleeder’s generation and was called as a witness in his criminal case. That testimony was difficult because Kok did not want to come to the Netherlands without the guarantee that he would not be arrested.