National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie
National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie
National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie
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Roma have been reported for committing criminal offences in various places<br />
in the Netherlands. These offences usually involve pick pocketing, organised<br />
shoplifting and burglaries. Criminal activities are mainly committed with family<br />
members, whereby several Roma families sometimes work closely together.<br />
In Belgium, crimes committed by such families have been a problem for quite<br />
a while and a policy has been developed accordingly. Begging and prostitution<br />
by Bulgarian Roma is more of a problem in Belgium than it is in the Netherlands.<br />
However, in early 2007, groups of organised pickpockets from a Bulgarian<br />
Roma background did come to the Netherlands from Belgium. In recent years,<br />
there have also been incidents involving very young Roma girls who were forced<br />
to work as prostitutes in the Netherlands. A possible intensification of Belgian<br />
measures against crimes committed by Roma could result in criminal Roma<br />
moving more and more of their activities to the Netherlands.<br />
6.3 West African criminal networks<br />
West African criminal networks (WACN) 75 are involved in various types of crime.<br />
This is not a new phenomenon. In the Netherlands a policy has therefore been<br />
launched aimed at hindering West African criminal networks as much as<br />
possible. The Apollo project, in which advance fee fraud was tackled, was part<br />
of this policy. As described in the discussion of advance fee fraud in section<br />
3.3.4, West African criminal networks consist of loose cells of expendable people<br />
who work closely together for a short period of time. This makes them flexible<br />
and difficult to identify and track down. In the Netherlands these networks<br />
mainly consist of Nigerians, which is also shown by the analysis of cash flows<br />
and money transfers. Many of the Nigerians from the West African criminal<br />
networks who live in the Netherlands are here illegally. 76 They are often in<br />
possession of various forged travel documents and identity papers.<br />
Criminal Nigerians have a reputation worldwide as fraudsters. The money they<br />
steal is partly used to fund other criminal activities, such as cocaine trafficking.<br />
West Africa has recently played a role in the transhipment of cocaine from South<br />
America to Europe, with Nigeria being a major transit country. In the<br />
Netherlands Nigerians are active on the cocaine market in Amsterdam. Cocaine<br />
is smuggled using couriers. The number of Nigerian cocaine couriers arrested at<br />
Schiphol Airport is increasing. Nowadays Nigerians are also organisers of cocaine<br />
transports. Nigerians who used to be couriers have now become the owners<br />
75<br />
The West African countries are: Benin, Burkina-Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,<br />
the Cape Verde Islands, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.<br />
76<br />
The number of Nigerians living legally in the Netherlands was 8,393 on January 1 st 2007.<br />
222 <strong>National</strong> <strong>Threat</strong> <strong>Assessment</strong> 2008 – <strong>Organised</strong> crime
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