Drug criminals target Limburg catering establishments still recovering from 2021 flood

Drug criminals are preying on vulnerable catering entrepreneurs in Zuid-Limburg who are still struggling to recover from the floods in 2021. At least “a few dozen” catering entrepreneurs have received offers of financial support in return for laundering criminal money, facilitating drug trafficking, or providing meeting space for criminal consultations, the Limburg police told the Volkskrant.

“We have found that criminals also abuse a disaster to capitalize on it,” Danny Frijters, a chief detective in Limburg, told the newspaper. “If an entrepreneur is in trouble and the claims handling process by the insurer or government service desk is slow, quick money seems like an easy solution. But it’s not. Once you start working with criminals, it is very difficult to get rid of them. Because then you know so much about their criminal activities that they won’t let you go. Then you are part of their criminal organization.”

Frijters couldn’t say how many catering entrepreneurs have accepted “help” from criminals. The police mainly hear from entrepreneurs who rejected the advances. According to Frijters, criminals usually accept it if the entrepreneur rejects their offer. But, if vulnerable entrepreneurs agree, they’re stuck in the criminal for a long time, perhaps their whole life. “Unfortunately, it’s a realistic picture. We want to make entrepreneurs resistant to this form of undermining as early as possible.”

During the early stages of this type of undermining, there is little the police can do except spread the preventive message. “Approaching entrepreneurs to offer help is not a criminal offense,” Frijters pointed out. The police are keeping an eye out for inexplicable expenses from struggling entrepreneurs. Because “an entrepreneur who offers a meeting room for criminal consultations in which plans are made for drug trafficking or assassinations is indeed punishable and subject to criminal investigation,” he said.

Mayor Daan Prevoo of Valkenburg aan Geul recognizes the picture painted by the Limburg police. “We also get signals that people are going around with a big bag of money to offer entrepreneurs support in repairing the premises,” he told the Volkskrant. “In Valkenburg alone, 400 entrepreneurs were affected by the flood disaster. They have physical damage and lost sales. Then, as an entrepreneur, you are dependent on insurance and government regulations. And that’s where, as we know, things went pretty wrong.”

“The longer it takes, the more chance organized crime has to strike. They come with a bag of money: the entrepreneur doesn’t have to pay interest but does sign an IOU. Then he is immediately stuck in the criminals’ clutches,” Prevoo said. The government has only itself to blame, he added.”If you don’t help entrepreneurs in time, you leave the door wide open for other money flows.”