How Moroccan Mocro Mafia grew to become Europe's worst drug threat

The Mocro Maffia drug cartel has emerged as a key player in Europe’s cocaine trade, with its links to organised criminal groups in Morocco and Latin America making it a persistent and growing threat to the continent and North Africa, warns Enact, a European Union funded research institute working on Transnational Organized Crime.

The group operates mainly from Belgium and the Netherlands, controlling a third of Europe’s cocaine market. Recent reports indicate that Belgium and the Netherlands have overtaken Spain as Europe’s main entry points for cocaine coming from Latin America, with the port of Antwerp intercepting 65.6 tonnes of the drug in 2020, which nearly doubled in 2022.

The Mocro Maffia’s ability to corrupt government officials is a strategic advantage for Latin American drug cartels, making the group a preferred ally.

The cartel has been implicated in audio exchanges intercepted through the Sky ECC app, revealing how Mocro Maffia members boasted about bribing customs officers in the Port of Dakar, which is used as a transit point. Dockers in Antwerp and Rotterdam are also paid up to €100,000 to relocate containers to avoid police and customs control.

The Netherlands is an ideal place for drug traffickers seeking to launder their money, with a reported €16 billion laundered annually due to the country’s large, internationally oriented highly digitised financial sector and open, trade-oriented economy. The creation of shell companies is a crucial conduit for money laundering in the Netherlands, making it a primary money laundering center. Belgium’s real estate sector is also a significant money laundering route.

The Mocro Maffia uses violence to expand its reach into the cocaine market, and in the past decade, over 100 people have died in violence between the group and Belgian drug traffickers. The group is also suspected of involvement in the murder of a Moroccan judge’s son.

Derk Wiersum, an Amsterdam lawyer specialising in organised crime and drug trafficking networks, and Peter R de Vries, a journalist reporting on drug trafficking, were assassinated in 2019 and 2021, allegedly by the Mocro Maffia. A Belgian girl of Moroccan origin was also recently killed when her parents’ home was shot at, allegedly by the group.

The Mocro Maffia’s reach is so extensive that it is considered a threat to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Dutch Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia, who are both under heavy security due to kidnapping threats linked to the group. Despite the threat, disorganized public authorities are faced with organized criminality, says Hans Werdmölder, author of Nederland Narcostaat.

Authorities must raise their game to counter the Mocro Maffia threat,  criminologist and co-founder of Crim’Halt, Fabrice Rizzoli told Enact. He suggests that rather than focusing on stopping the trade, the associated violence must be curbed. In Italy, drastic legislation and judicial measures in the 1980s ended almost all violence related to drug trafficking.

Italian authorities punish drug traffickers financially, targeting their assets, and around $6 billion in assets are confiscated from drug traffickers yearly in Italy, of which 60% is eventually permanently seized. These resources are redistributed to non-governmental organizations, showing citizens the concrete results of government action against drug dealers and the mafia.

Operations such as the arrest of 49 members of organized crime groups in November 2022 and asset-linked approaches by the European Union and North African authorities must be stepped up. Without this, the Mocro Maffia will have an open road to increasing its trafficking web between the two continents.