Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, December 17, 2024, p. 23
Paris. Narcos Europeans like Sean McGovern, from the Irish cartel Kinahan, or the Spanish Alejandro Salgado Vega, The Tiger”They lived lavishly in Dubai with total impunity. But, progress in judicial cooperation may lead many of them to look for other hiding places.
This emirate was for years the ideal refuge for some of Europe’s biggest drug traffickers due to limited judicial cooperation, which meant little risk of being extradited, according to European researchers and judges interviewed by the Afp news agency.
Thus, this 35 square kilometer territory of the Gulf served as a rearguard for trafficking and money laundering activities.
Europol, the European Union Agency for Police Cooperation, described the city in April as a remote coordination centerwhere traffickers live openly and can launder their assets through luxury goods and properties.
Police say the big European bosses pull the strings from the comfort of Dubai, far from ports like Antwerp in Belgium, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Le Havre in France, where drugs enter the continent.
Here we are not concerned reckoning
Enjoying the low crime rate in Dubai, without the worries of a possible settling of scores, the drug lords operated safely, making business and contacts with other major global traffickers in hookah cafes, according to judicial sources.
However, this situation may be changing.
In October, McGovern, considered the right-hand man of narco Irishman Daniel Kinahan, was arrested with an extradition order from Dublin, accused of murder and being the leader of a criminal organization.
McGovern’s arrest in Dubai followed the arrest in July of Faissal Taghi, accused of drug trafficking and murder in the Netherlands, and his extradition some time later.
His father, Ridouan Taghi, was sentenced to life in prison in Amsterdam in February.
The United Arab Emirates is committed to working with all its international partners to disrupt and deter all forms of global illicit financinga government official told the AFP agency.
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