The police arrested three men in a Hilversum warehouse on Monday after finding 32 kilograms of crystal meth. The drugs, with a street value of some 3.2 million euros, were hidden in a magnet that came from Mexico and entered the Netherlands via Schiphol, the police said in a statement on Tuesday.
The arrested suspects are a 47-year-old man from Almeer, a 32-year-old man from Amsterdam, and a 43-year-old man from Uithoorn. The crystal meth was seized and destroyed.
The police are finding an increasing number of crystal meth labs in the Netherlands. Mexican drug cartels are trying to push the highly-addictive and dangerous drug in Western Europe, police sources told newspaper AD.
The police discovered a large crystal meth lab on a cargo river boat in Moerdijk on Friday afternoon. The boat turned out to be booby-trapped. While the police were raiding it on Friday night, the boat suddenly started sinking.
A total of four men were arrested, three of whom are from Mexico. So far the police said nothing about the suspects' backgrounds, but according to De Telegraaf they may be tied to a Mexican drug cartel.
The Nederweert based company The Next Crowd is going to recruit construction workers to build American president Donald Trump's now infamous wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. The recruitment website goes online on Wednesday, AD reports.
The Dutch police intercepted the communications of Mexican drug baron Joaquín Guzmán, better known as 'El Chapo', for 18 months in 2011 and 2012 and shared that data with the FBI. This tapping operation gave the American authorities a complete picture of El Chapo's extensive organization, the Sinaloa cartel, and ultimately contributed to his arrest, sources told the Volkskrant.
The United States implemented import duties on steel and aluminum from the European Union, Mexico and Canada. From 6:00 a.m. on Friday, Dutch time, a rate of 25 percent applies for steel and 10 percent for aluminum from these countries. The Dutch government called the decision unwise and regrettable, NOS and NU.nl report.
Rabobank agreed to pay 369 million dollars, around 300 million euros, to settle allegations that its California subsidiary Rabobank National Association (RNA) lied to regulators investigating charges of Mexican drug money laundering. According to the settlement, RNA does not dispute that it accepted at least 369 million dollars in money illegally gained from drug trafficking and other activity between 2009 and 2012, American news agency Fox News reports.
The North American trade agreement NAFTA falling apart would have negative consequences for the three countries it covers - the United States, Canada, and Mexico - but not for the Netherlands, Rabobank said in a report drawn up in response to increasing uncertainty that NAFTA will survive. The agreement collapsing could give Dutch businesses a 3 billion euros boost, the bank calculates.
Dutch physiotherapist Jaime Willems was working in a hospital in the Mexican city of Puebla when a powerful earthquake hit on Tuesday, local time. The earthquake measured 7.1 on the Richter scale and already claimed the lives of 224 people. "It felt like the building was lifted and put down again twenty times in a row", Willems said to RTL Nieuws.
Queen Maxima was in Mexico when a massive earthquake hit the country at 11:49 p.m. on Thursday local time, 6:49 a.m. on Friday Dutch time. The Dutch queen is safe and unharmed and will be returning to the Netherlands on schedule later today, the Telegraaf reports.
URGENTE | Terremoto de 8.0 en la Ciudad de México, según informó el Servicio Sismológico Nacional (SSN). pic.twitter.com/Viv01pkPQp
Dutch woman Olga Kluivers was stabbed to death in Mexico on Tuesday. Her Mexican boyfriend is suspected of the crime. He is on the run, NOS reports.
Family members found the 60-year-old woman from Eibergen dead in her home. She owned a bar on the Pacific, in the town of Barra de Vavidad, according to Omroep Gelderland.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed Kluivers' family in the Netherlands about her death.
The Dutch woman's body was already cremated. In Mexico it is common practice to bury or cremate a body shortly after death, according to NOS.
Dutch brewer Heineken reached an agreement to acquire the currently loss-making Brazilian breweries of Japanese brewer Kirin Holdings, Heineken announced in a press release on Monday. Heineken, the second largest brewer in the world, will pay 1.025 billion euros in cash and debt acquisition for 12 beer brewing locations, production facilities and the distribution network Kirin Brasil has in place.
Criminal lawyer Goran Sluiter filed charges against Rabobank on Thursday accusing the bank's executives of complicity in murder and other crimes committed by Mexican drug cartels. This follows an investigation by the United States judiciary into a Rabobank subsidiary suspected of laundering Mexican drug profits, the Volkskrant reports.
A Mosaic tiled Mexican skull in the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden - one of the museum's star pieces - is a fake, NOS reports. The skull is supposed to be hundreds of years old, but research revealed that glue was used on it that wasn't available until last century.
The museum bought the skull from Mexico in 1963 for 20 thousand dollars. The museum believed the skull came from the heyday of the Mixtec - an ancient Mexican people that decorated skulls with precious stones and put them in crypts. This was in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus.
Aeromexico, the largest airline in Mexico, now flies to Schiphol. The airline now offers three direct flights a week between Amsterdam and Mexico city, the airline announced in a press statement. The Netherlands fourth EU nation the Mexican airline flies to.
Central American companies annually funnel millions of dollars through the Netherlands in an effort to avoid tax. The Netherlands route is particularly popular with wealthy Mexicans and Ecuadorians who use complex tax structures to get their money out of the country. These structures are often technically legal, but "sometimes illegal", according to Trouw and the Financieele Dagblad based on the Panama Papers.
Rotterdam attorney and notary firm Ploum Lodder Princen and Amsterdam trust office Infintax helped set up complex tax constructions for foreign companies and wealthy individuals, according to Trouw and Financieele Dagblad based on the Panama Papers.
Ten Dutch people are infected with the Zika Virus, the virus that took over South and Central America in mid-December. The virus is generally not dangerous to adults, but can be very dangerous for unborn children
The Rabobank branch in Calexico, California is facing an investigation by American judicial authorities due to suspicions of across the border money laundering. Rabobank is "cooperating fully" with the investigation
Dutch company Startup Bootcamp is opening two new branches in the United States - one in New York and one in San Francisco. The company is also opening new offices in Mexico and South Africa.
Minister Bert Koenders of Foreign Affairs pushed for an improvement on human rights in Mexico during his visit to the the South American country. He discussed this with his Mexican counterpart Minister José Antonio Meade Kuribrena as well as with the representative of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Javier Hernandez.
Inspired by the annual La Tomatina in Bunol, more than 1,000 people took to Dam Square on Sunday armed with tomatoes to protest against Russian sanctions. At 3 p.m a shipping container was emptied into the square and participants pelted each other with the 120,000 pieces of the overripe fruit bought from growers left in the cold by Russia’s boycott of Dutch fruit and vegetables.
With over a thousand of the country's cafes and bars closing up shop in the last five years, local brewers have been hit particularly hard. The number of pubs in the country fell from 8,400 to 7,200, leaving brewers to battle it out for sales in a highly competitive market.
On the 12th of November, Amsterdam will be the background to a re-match between Mexico and The Netherlands after their second round World Cup face-off left Mexico going home. The match is part of Mexico's autumn tour, the Mexican football federation announced Wednesday.
