Farmers who inadvertently rent out a barn to drug criminals. We have seen this in Brabant for a long time. On Monday, something new was introduced in a few Brabant municipalities: a more complicated rental contract should prevent you from gardening in it, as a farmer. Whether it will work is the question, because a lease with the underworld is always hot air. If you make it more complicated, it remains hot air, reported reporter Willem-Jan Joachems in quite a few drug cases.
A friendly couple, married for forty years: ‘good people’. But then financial problems arise. A former colleague wants to help them out. He wants to rent their shed, for a fee. It is not necessary. But six months later, the problems are still there and he is at the door again. He can use the shed for 500 euros per month. His story is that the former colleague wants to distill vodka there.
Meth and coke
A couple in Zundert smelled so bad. Suddenly there was a crystal meth lab in their shed. Other cases made the news in Lepelstraat, Fijnaart and Baarle-Nassau. In the polder between Kruisland and Steenbergen, a coke lab with ten Colombians turned up this spring. They lived in the sheds. And don’t forget the weed, that’s still good trade. Farmers stand by and watch.
These are stories that you often hear in court cases in Brabant, roughly a few dozen times a year. No one knows how big the problem really is. Some of the farmers will be terrified without anyone ever finding out. Drug labs come and go and sometimes they only exist for a very short time.
‘Tidy man’
Barn owners, often farmers, almost all tell the same thing after a raid. A neat and friendly man in a suit came by. Someone who was looking for a storage place for wine, tents or a caravan. The passport or ID appeared to be in order. When a lease was signed, payment was made a few months in advance: four thousand euros in hand. Workers brought the stuff.
And then all of a sudden there was a drug lab, surreptitiously, through deception. Then step in as a farmer. Even tipping Report Crime Anonymously is bloody linked, because the drug criminals will always come to you.
Ghost
That decent man later denied everything. Either there was no evidence, or he was missing. These people are remarkably often unaffected. That is the role of the cat catcher: a kind of ghost that haunts between the upper and the underworld. Because of course a drug lab never rents a shed or shed himself.
If you make the contract more complicated – with even more fine print – that doesn’t change. Such a new contract is no problem for a wrong tenant. The business is too profitable for that. “The Nice Man” just needs to fabricate some more counterfeits. Possibly set up a fake company. No cash? Then it comes via a detour from an account from a distant country.
The ZLTO has been offering a new model rental contract since Monday. It can be agreed that the landlord can always walk in for a check-up. The question is whether a farmer wants that. He won’t be the first to get a gun to the head.
tracking
A farmer cannot play a police officer. That’s what cops do. But also municipal boas and other supervisors. They have to keep their eyes, ears and – not to forget – nose open in the countryside. Riding around on a bike and browsing. Have a chat and be visible and show that things are wrong. Detecting and disrupting still works better than flailing around with a paperwork full of fine print.
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