Moroccan-Dutch ’Mocro Maffia’ Expands Cocaine Trade Across Europe and North Africa

"Belgium and the Netherlands have surpassed Spain as the main entry points into Europe for cocaine from Latin America. The 65.6 tons of this drug seized at the port of Antwerp in 2020 have almost doubled in 2022. And Morocco is a crucial link in the chain," the institute says in a report on the Mocro Maffia threat affecting Europe and North Africa.

Active since the 1990s, the Mocro Maffia mainly operates from Belgium and the Netherlands. It controls a third of the European cocaine market. According to the ISS, Latin American drug traffickers have increasingly used Morocco and other Maghreb countries, as well as dealers with a foot in the kingdom and Europe, like the Mocro Maffia, for their transnational cocaine trade.

Referring to the Dutch investigation into the Sky ECC application, the institute recalls that members of the Mocro Maffia have boasted of having greased the palms of customs officers at the port of Dakar, which serves as a transit point, and having paid up to 100,000 € to dockers in Antwerp and Rotterdam to move the containers, in order to avoid police and customs checks. The Mocro Maffia is not only illustrative in drug trafficking and corruption. It is also known to be a mafia using violence to control the cocaine market. "Over the past decade, more than 100 people have died in violence between the Mocro Maffia and Belgian drug traffickers," the report recalls.

Faced with this gloomy picture, the ISS has made some recommendations. It notably recommends the installation or modernization of adequate modern surveillance equipment - and the training of law enforcement in its use - which could help better detect drug transit hubs in Morocco and the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.