4 days ago
Prosecutors demand nine year sentence for Kinahan associate drug lord Mink Kok
The 63-year-old is trying to overturn a 2023 drug smuggling conviction
Prosecutors in the Netherlands have demanded Kinahan associate and drug lord Mink Kok receive a nine-year prison sentence for his role in smuggling drugs into the country.
It comes as the 63-year-old appealed his conviction at the court of appeal at The Hague on Wednesday.
He was handed down a six-year sentence in June 2023 after he was found guilty for his role in smuggling 400 kilos of cocaine into the Netherlands in a shipment of bananas.
The consignment arrived in 2020 via the port of Antwerp but was somehow mislaid and was eventually found at a supermarket in Remscheid, Germany.
De Telegraaf reported that the court saw sufficient evidence for a conviction based on intercepted messages on the Sky ECC server.
His lawyer, Mark Teurlings, has pleaded for his client to be acquitted.
He claims that there is insufficient evidence to prove that the encrypted text messages were sent by Kok.
He also claimed that the link between Kok and the banana shipment is 'factually and substantively untenable.'
Mink Kok
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The hearing will continue next Wednesday.
According to De Telegraaf 'the [encrypted] messages discuss, among other things, amounts of money and order lists.'
'In its ruling, the court refers to raw materials and chemicals and blocks of cocaine and cocaine base, payments and locations and required personnel (cooks).
"He had a leading and coordinating role," the court said.
'In addition, he had a leading role in setting up what appears to be a large-scale drug lab, given the amounts paid and quantities of chemicals purchased.'
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service had previously demanded nine years in prison for Kok but the sentence was lowered as there was insufficient evidence that he also had another batch of drugs in his possession.
The convicted drug trafficker and gun runner, one of the most infamous gangland criminals in Dutch history, had struck up a close working relationship with Christy Kinahan Snr when they were both based in Amsterdam in the 1990s.
It is believed the pair worked together to import millions of euro worth of cocaine and ecstasy into Ireland and the UK.
Kok's son-in-law, named only as Najim Z is also accused by the Public Prosecution Service of being behind the importation from South America of two batches of 750 and 840 kilos of cocaine.
These were intercepted in 2021 in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam.
Najim Z (42) was previously sentenced for those two coke shipments in a separate case.
He was handed down an eight-year prison sentence minus time spent in pre-detention and a detention period in Lebanon.
However, prosecutors have demanded another 12 years in prison against him two weeks ago in the case which is completely separate from that of Kok's.
According to the justice officials, evidence against Kok stems from intercepted Sky ECC messages.
Justice officials say they can prove that there was intensive contact between Sky phones that are attributed to Z and Mink Kok, who were both arrested in Lebanon at the end of March 2022.
There was no Sky telephone found with Kok when he was arrested, but detectives say that the investigation against Kok started after he admitted to a TV programme that he used Sky telephones to communicate with others.
His lawyer previously denied that Kok was the user of the two Sky phones attributed to him.
'In the messages we clearly read that the user of the telephone would be in the Netherlands, even in Amsterdam,' Teurlings has been quoted as saying. 'So the user could never have been Kok because he was in Lebanon at the time.'
Various media have referred to Najim Z based on various judicial or police sources as a 'leader' in Ridouan Taghi's network.
Dutch-Moroccan Taghi is regarded as one of Europe's biggest drugs traffickers and is a key associate of the Kinahan Cartel.
He was one of a number of high-profile criminals who were guests at Daniel Kinahan's wedding in Dubai in 2017.
Along with a number of his associates, Taghi is currently facing multiple charges ranging from assassinations, attempted killings and murder plots.
Lawyers for Z have previously contested that their client should be considered as 'the financial man' in Taghi's drug network, as the Public Prosecutor believes.
