Spain detains Mocro Maffia leader wanted by the Netherlands

Spanish police said Thursday they had arrested a top member of the Mocro Maffia, a Moroccan organised crime group based in the Netherlands, suspected of leading a drug trafficking ring in southern Spain.

Karim Bouyakhrichan was arrested along with five other suspected members of the gang which is suspected of having bought 172 properties worth some 50 million euros ($54 million) to launder their gains from drug trafficking, police said.

He is the brother of Samir Bouyakhrichan, another leading member of the Mocro Maffia who was assassinated in 2014 near Marbella, an upmarket tourist resort on Spain’s southern Costa del Sol.

That killing sparked a “reorganisation” of organised crime groups in the region which sparked a police investigations which ultimately led to the arrests, Daniel Vazquez, an officer with a Spanish police unit specialised in economic and tax crimes, told a news conference.

Karim, who is one of the most wanted criminals in the Netherlands, is suspected of leading a ring dedicated to “the international trafficking of narcotics on a large scale”, mainly by importing cocaine into Spain, police said in a statement.

The ring is believed to have had “a solid infrastructure” in place in several cities in Spain, as well as Morocco, the Netherlands, the Dominican Republic and the United Arab Emirates to launder the money it made, the statement added.

Police had been searching for Karim for five years. He was very difficult to track down because he moved from one country to another, had his own security service and was “very careful in his communications”.

Karim and the five other suspects who were arrested will go on trial in Spain and then sent to the Netherlands, where they are wanted for crimes carried out in that country.

The Mocro Mafia made international headlines in 2022 after it emerged that Dutch Crown Princess Amalia had been placed under heavy protection in response to fears of an attack by the group.