On the basis of criminal intelligence the police* estimate that there are approximately a hundred criminal organisations active in the Netherlands, about 80% of which are engaged wholly or partly in drug trafficking*. The police believe that there has been no real change in the volume of trafficking in drugs since 1993, since when 33 highly organised criminal groups have been dismantled, 27 of which were involved in drug trafficking. Overall, more than 100 people were arrested who could be regarded as key members or leaders of these organisations. However, new groups have also become active over this period.
About half of the disclosures to the Unusual Transactions Disclosures Office which are deemed to be suspicious are transactions concerned with drugs*.
Organisations whose members are primarily Dutch are primarily engaged in trafficking in soft drugs. The turnover on soft drugs sold to consumers in the Netherlands is estimated to be NLG 800 million, half of which is accounted for by cannabis grown in the Netherlands. Dutch citizens are also involved in the transit of and international trafficking in soft drugs and ecstasy. A considerable part of the latter takes place entirely outside the Netherlands.
The main activity of three-quarters of the 100 highly organised criminal groups is trafficking in hard drugs; that of almost half is trafficking in soft drugs (some groups have more than one primary activity).
Over half the organisations which principally traffic in hard drugs also traffic in soft drugs and the vast majority of criminal organisations involved in soft drugs are also involved in hard drugs. At the level of organised crime there would therefore appear to be little of the separation of markets that the authorities seek to promote at user level.
No overview of criminal organisations involved in drugs or any other field of crime is available within the European Union. There are still no uniform definitions or list of criteria on which such an overview could be based. At national level, there are considerable differences in the availability of relevant statistics. The Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany are in the vanguard as regards describing the phenomenon of organised crime and this can produce a distorted picture. Within the framework of judicial and administrative cooperation within the European Union, a working party is engaged in seeking an appropriate method of assessing organised crime in the Union, pending the establishment of a European system for the gathering and analysis of information. The Netherlands plays an active role in this working party.
Bearing in ming the reservations necessary on account of the above-mentioned handicaps, it can be said that organised crime has taken firm root in all countries in Europe and that drug trafficking and smuggling continues to be one of the main activities of criminal organisations active in the Union. Many of these organisations operate internationally. They do not restrict their activities to one type of crime, either, but are involved in a whole range of them, particularly smuggling illegal immigrants, prostitution, arms dealing, extortion, crimes of violence, car theft and dealing in stolen cars, forgery, EC fraud, the illegal processing or dumping of waste, corruption, fraud and money laundering, and threatening police officers and witnesses to crimes, for example*.
The various organisations sometimes cooperate, often on an international basis. As stated previously, the role that the Netherlands plays as a centre for the international transport of legal goods has created an infrastructure which can also be used for the import and transit of illegal drugs and for the preparations for such activities. Active steps will be taken to combat this abuse in the years ahead.
As observed above, the Dutch police, the customs authorities and the Public Prosecutions Department take vigorous action to combat the import of and trafficking in drugs. The investigating officers, customs officials and public prosecutors involved have put in a great deal of effort in recent years. A great deal of work has been done in the Netherlands on the development of the new investigative techniques involved in crime analysis and this has resulted in more systematic investigations into criminal organisations, in which data from the Unusual Transactions Disclosures Office etc. is also used. In close cooperation with the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Department (FIOD), increasing use is being made of new statutory options for tracing and freezing assets obtained illegally and declaring them forfeit. The arrest of the leaders of about thirty highly organised criminal groups in the last two years bears witness to the fact that some success has been achieved in tackling criminal organisations.
The work of the police and judicial authorities helps to ensure that drugs remain relatively expensive for users and that people cannot deal in them openly. Like the tried and tested policy of keeping the markets for soft and hard drugs separate, this also helps to limit the number of people starting to use hard drugs for the first time. Because of the major efforts which are required to obtain enough money to buy hard drugs, this application of the criminal law probably also helps to persuade some older addicts to give up their addiction.
As in other countries, so in the Netherlands the endeavours of the criminal justice authorities to tackle drug trafficking have not resulted in a permanent fall in the supply of hard drugs. International markets continue to be able to supply drugs and the potential profits are so enormous that when dealers are arrested and criminal organisations dismantled, their places are as a rule rapidly taken by others. In this regard there is little prospect of lasting success. Here too it must be realised that national and international networks of criminal organisations are gradually acquiring an increasing amount of economic and financial power. It is estimated that the annual worldwide turnover on drugs is NLG 500 billion*. The problem of the growth of criminal organisations, involved in drug trafficking and other areas of crime, is one facing large parts of the world and has the full attention of the member states of the United Nations, as was demonstrated at the conferences of head of government and ministers in Naples in 1994.
In the years ahead the government will make an active contribution to increasing awareness of and promoting a debate on this worldwide problem, which some people believe to be the inescapable result of banning the use of drugs under the criminal law. The government does not, however, share the view which is sometimes heard that the only remedy to the drugs problem is to completely legalise all drugs and that a differentiated policy geared to managing the problem is pointless. We will continue to make every effort to combat organised crime, including drug trafficking, through the criminal law and administrative measures.