BEIRUT: One of the suspects detained last Sunday in one of Lebanon’s largest drug busts in more than a year is a notorious international drug and arms trafficker with connections to criminal rings across at least four countries, a security source told The Daily Star Wednesday.
Dutchman Robert Mink Kok, 50, along with three others, was arrested by the Internal Security Forces for the possession of 53 kilograms of cocaine Sunday after months of investigation.
“Many people thought it was just a matter of time before he was busted,” said Dutch journalist Sander Kupers, who reports for the Amsterdam-based news agency ANP, and who met Kok once at a funeral.
Kok, known in the Netherlands as Mink K., began his drug career shortly after he dropped out of law school at University of Amsterdam, when he joined a Kibbutz in Israel. There, he learned Hebrew and made connections that he would later use in his ecstasy export business. He later made a name for himself for being known as the first person to export ecstasy from the Netherlands, according to Dutch crime journalist Wim Van de Pol.
Shortly after his stint in Israel, he traveled to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where he made connections and learned about the hashish market.
He was arrested in 2000 and 2006 for his involvement of trafficking arms. Also in 2006, he was tried in Rotterdam for the murder of a hashish dealer, but was acquitted in 2007.
Van de Pol notes that any drug conviction for Kok would be significant, as his past convictions have so far only been related to arms trafficking.
“They always want to get him, but it’s always hard to prove,” he said.
Police officers from the Drug Control Bureau Sunday chased two cars – a Range Rover and a Mercedes-Benz – in the Kaslik area north of Beirut after units alerted them that drugs, worth $2.3 million, were being hidden inside the vehicles of an organized crime network.
After two weeks of monitoring and chasing members of the network in various areas including the southern coastal city of Sidon, Jounieh - to the north of the capital, and Beirut, the bureau had identified and arrested a Palestinian with a Bulgarian passport for possession of 53 kilograms of cocaine.
Police interrogation of the Palestinian suspect resulted in the arrest of three other people: Kok, 50, Irishman Sean Preston, 33, and Palestinians Ibrahim Radi Chahine, 49, and his son Radi Ibrahim, 30. Police discovered that the suspects, who arrived from Europe, had planned to sell the drugs – which were imported from South America – for $45,000 per kilogram.
Investigations are still under way in cooperation with Interpol and other international anti-drug intelligence groups in an attempt to uncover others in the network.
Sources close to the case told The Daily Star that a number of Lebanese were also involved in the drug ring and that some of those involved are well-known personalities and might be closely connected to local politicians.
"The Lebanese suspects are now being closely monitored, and the authorities have provided their names to the airport and Interpol. If they try to leave the country, they will be arrested," the source said.
The Lebanese authorities through their investigation are trying to obtain more information about the Lebanese suspects, their operations, supporters and their foreign contacts before any arrests are made, the source added.