Walter Finch
THE Marbella courts which allowed one of Europe’s most wanted mafia leaders to skip bail did not issue an arrest warrant for him untill three weeks later.
The arrest in January of Karim ‘Taxi’ Bouyakhricham, alleged leader of Holland’s feared ‘Mocro mafia’, was seen as a major coup for Spanish law enforcement.
But a sequence of barely-believable blunders has seen him not only escape seemingly scott free, but given a three week head start on cops trying to bring him back in.
The Dutch-Moroccan was released on provisional bail on March 19, eight weeks after his arrest on January 25, with orders to regularly sign on at a Marbella court.
He initially signed in at Fuengirola and then at Rincon de la Victoria
Unsurprisingly, the mafia boss made just one trip to the court, on April 1. On his next expected appearance on April 15 he failed to show.
A Marbella court only issued arrest warrants for him on May 7, over three weeks after his escape was known to them.
They issued a European Arrest Warrant, but also put out an International Arrest Warrant, in case he has fled to Morocco, as many suspect.
Bouyakhricham, who is the brother and successor of assassinated mafia leader Sofian Bouyakhricham, apparently earned the nickname ‘Taxi’ for ‘always delivering on time’.
Dutch authorities eagerly put in an extradition request for their public enemy number one at the time of his arrest, urging the Spanish courts to remand him in custody in the meantime.
As well as being an alleged cocaine kingpin, Bouyakhricham had made death threats towards the Netherlands’ Crown Princess, Amalia of Orange, when she was just 18.
Ironically, Amalia was taking refuge from the threats in Madrid until just a few months ago. She has since returned to Amsterdam.
He is accused of laundering around €6 million euros from drug trafficking and importing thousands of kilos of cocaine through the port of Antwerp, among other charges.
The police operation which arrested him saw the confiscation of 172 properties worth €50 million and almost €3 million in bank accounts were frozen.
Bouyakhricham is thought to head up a money-laundering operation valued in excess of €6 billion, as well as working with drug cartels in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
Investigators also believe that he has become the link man between the South American cartels and the Balkan cartel, Albanian mafia and other European criminal operations which have lately joined forces to become a ‘super cartel’.
Together, the various groups are responsible for the importation of hundreds of tonnes of cocaine into Europe through ports in Spain, Belgium and Holland, the proceeds of which finds its way into the legitimate Spanish economy through real estate and other vectors.
