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Netherlands: Uncontrolled deliveries galore

01 July 1995

The Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported on 26 May that a confidential Rijksrecherche (state police, charged with investigating corruption and answerable only to the Attorney-General) investigation into wrongdoings at the Haarlem Criminal Intelligence Service (CID) has led to the discovery of at least fifty incidents of suspicious containers being allowed to pass through customs unchecked in the Rotterdam and Amsterdam harbours. Tens of thousands of kilos of cannabis and hundreds of kilos of hard drugs from Colombia, Pakistan and Nigeria have thus been distributed throughout the Netherlands and beyond. CID officers involved in these operations have told NRC Handelsblad that over the last five years it has been standing policy in Haarlem to allow criminals to transport large shipments of drugs with the intention of infiltrating the highest levels of criminal networks. The extent of the operations could be reconstructed because customs officials have logged all cases in which they were requested to refrain from checking suspected cargoes. Even tips from the US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) about incoming drug shipments were ignored. When in June 1992 such a DEA lead was followed through in spite of yet another CID "passe partout", two suitcases, together containing one hundred kilos of cocaine were confiscated. According to sources in the public prosecutor's office, the CID chief subsequently complained to customs because they had frustrated an ongoing investigation. Het Parool; NRC Handelsblad 26.5.95.