National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

A strikingly high number of criminal caravan camp residents are found among
the operators. They control the entire growing process. They set up nurseries
both inside and outside the caravan camp, cultivate, cut and dry the plants, and
sell the harvest mainly to grow shops, from where they also obtain their gear. In
the south of the Netherlands reports state that criminal caravan camp residents
focus not only on the production of Nederweed, but also on buying in the
regional Nederweed in order to create a monopoly. An undesirable additional
circumstance is that the violent reputation of caravan camp residents can also
be seen in the cannabis trade. As a result, the involvement of this category
of caravan camp residents in the cultivation of and trade in cannabis has
contributed to a hardening of the cannabis sector, especially on a regional level.
New players in the market
The first group of new players on the market consists of Dutch people who
enter the market laterally (i.e. from a different area of activity), as shown in the
WODC’s third Organised Crime Monitor report. The report describes these lateral
entrants as people who are unknown to the police and the judicial authorities.
There are also foreign lateral entrants who become involved in the organisation
of cannabis cultivation. Various criminal investigations revealed Vietnamese
criminal organisations that focussed on the production of, trade in and probably
also smuggling of Nederweed. The UK and Belgium also identified Vietnamese
criminal organisations that were active on the cannabis market, and British
Customs identified unusual drug transports from Vietnam.
Apart from lateral entrants, there is also another group of new players active
in the cannabis sector, namely criminal organisations that were previously
involved in other criminal activities but are focusing more and more on activities
in the cannabis sector. These criminal organisations include not only groups of
criminal caravan camp residents, but also Turkish criminal organisations that
were originally involved in heroin trafficking. The involvement of different types
of growers, dealers and smugglers in the cannabis sector and their attempts to
gain a position on the market affects the whole sector, which not only include
loss of quality of the final product 27 and the use of improper (growing) methods
to generate maximum profits, but also a hardening of the sector, increased
horizontal violence and involvement with other criminal activities such as
the production of, trade in and smuggling of hard drugs.
27
By using herbicides and dangerous additives to increase the weight, for example.
62 National Threat Assessment 2008 – Organised crime