Spanish Police Dismantle Mocro Maffia Network, Seize €50 Million in Assets on Costa del Sol

The Spanish police had been investigating for 6 years this branch of the Dutch Mocro Maffia that had settled on the Costa del Sol. This significant seizure of 172 properties and 3 million euros confirms the existence of this Moroccan criminal network on the Spanish coast, reports El Espanol. Last year, 116 tons of cocaine were seized in Antwerp, Belgium, the other country where the Mocro Maffia is active, and nearly 60 tons in the Netherlands. Part of these drugs would belong to Karim Bouyakhrichan, the drug baron arrested earlier this month in Marbella. This criminal would be in strong rivalry with Ridouan Taghi, the leader of the Dutch Mocro Maffia, currently in detention.

The Moroccan criminal network settled on the Costa del Sol in 2014, after the assassination of drug traffickers Gwenette Martha and Samir Bouyakhrichan, Karim’s brother. The former was shot dead in Amsterdam in May of the same year, and the latter was executed in August while on the terrace of the All in 1 Café in the Monte Halcones shopping center in Benahavís (Málaga). Naoufal Fassih, known as "Noffel," a close ally of Ridouan Taghi, and Najib "Ziggy" Himmich, another influential member of the Dutch Mocro Maffia, were in this bar. Noffel was arrested in 2016 in Dublin in an apartment belonging to the Irish Kinahan clan. He is serving a life sentence in the Netherlands for several murders.

As for Najib "Ziggy" Himmich, he has been missing in Madrid since November 2016 and his body has never been found. His wife was murdered a few months later in Amsterdam, in front of her 9-year-old niece. After the assassination of his brother, Karim Bouyakhrichan put a million euros on the head of Ridouan Taghi and his Chilean ally, Richard Eduardo Riquelme Vega, alias "Richard Rico." Taghi, Richard Rico and another drug trafficker, Raffaele Imperiale, tried to eliminate Karim. The latter, aided by Salim B., a trafficker arrested last week in Morocco, tried in turn to assassinate the three gang leaders in Dubai in 2015. But the plan failed. Taghi will finally be arrested in Dubai in 2020, and Karim, recently in Marbella.

It was not until the summer of 2018 that the presence of the Mocro Maffia was really felt on the Costa del Sol, with the explosion in Puerto Banús of a Moroccan-registered Audi Q-7, transporting Mocro Maffia members who managed to escape before the arrival of the police on the scene. Taghi and his Chilean partner are said to have lost 500 kilos of cocaine in this explosion. After this incident, the Utrecht drug trafficker Hamza Ziani was shot dead by a hitman while dining at the Tiki restaurant in Torremolinos. Ziani’s clan even had a torture chamber.