The Narcos cafe and the hunt for Michael Moogan

On 29 October 2013 Dutch police raided Café de Ketel and a dozen addresses in Rotterdam, many of them visited by Soytürk. They battered their way through front doors or sawed through them with chainsaws.

The Café de Ketel in Rotterdam was a business not open to the public.

It could only be entered via a security system and was strictly for known faces.

The café was a meeting point for criminal gangs to arrange deals. It may have appeared innocent enough from the outside, with tables and chairs for customers to enjoy a cup of coffee al fresco. The café was open 18 hours a day and used a buzzer system that let in only known criminals.

Situated in the centre of Rotterdam, minutes from the biggest port in Europe. Officers believe drug traffickers from Spain, the Netherlands, South America and Britain all used the Narcos cafe to arrange large imports of drugs.

The Turkish brothers Ugur and Ufuk Çamdere who ran the cafe are alleged to have taken commission for introducing other major players in the drugs world including Liverpool gangs.

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They plotted to move the drugs with legitimate cargo, which would be removed by corrupt port officials allegedly recruited by the Turkish brothers and their associates.

The Dutch police bugged the cafe and collected hundreds of hours of conversations about importations involving more British criminal gangs, they enlisted the help of the NCA to identify the unknown men in the meetings.

This led to the unravelling of an international drug syndicate which linked gangs across the world together.

 

The British connect

Michael Moogan from Liverpool went on the run for eight years over his role in a large-scale international drug trafficking plot has been jailed for 12 years.

The National Crime Agency worked relentlessly to trace Michael Paul Moogan, who was one of the UK’s most wanted men.

Moogan, 37, from Croxteth fled in October 2013 after a raid on a cafe suspected of being a front for meetings between drug traffickers and cartels.

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Working with the Dutch National Crime Squad, the NCA became aware of information that linked Moogan and two other British men to the venue which was the hub for Moogan’s conspiracy to bring hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the UK every month.

At the time of the raid, only one of the men, Robert Hamilton, 71, from Hale, Greater Manchester, could be found. He was jailed for eight years in 2014 after pleading guilty to drug charges.

The other man, Robert Gerard, 57, from Liverpool, handed himself in to the NCA after three years on the run claiming the pressure was too much. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and was jailed in 2017 for 14 years.

Moogan and his associates were involved in plans to import drugs from Latin America to the EU.

He had the ability to obtain as much as 500,000 Euros at a time to fund his cocaine deals from South American suppliers who would ship the Class A drug to Belgium. He did not need to pay for deals in instalments as is common in large scale drugs supply. Instead, he could pay in lump sums via Iraqi nationals based in the UK.

Moogan told criminal contacts that he brought cocaine into the UK concealed in meat from Argentina.

Evidence also showed he had the ability to bribe port officials to help ensure his drugs were not stopped.

As well as shipping from South America, Moogan used road transport networks stretching from Bulgaria to Latvia, Spain and Belgium to facilitate the movement of cocaine to the UK.

Moogan remained in hiding until April 2021 when he was arrested by Dubai Police.

NCA officers established Moogan was using numerous false identities to avoid capture.

Dubai Police believe that after entering the UAE using a different identity, he tried to avoid CCTV in an attempt to elude detectives who used their latest capabilities to track him down.

He had a German passport, and also a driver’s licence and citizen card in the name of Michael Dier but displaying his own image.

Moogan was the 86th person arrested under Operation Captura – an NCA fugitive campaign run in conjunction with Crimestoppers.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer Ben Rutter said: “Moogan did everything he could to avoid this day but justice has finally caught up with him.

“He was a major figure in international drug dealing.

“His consignments of Class A drugs undoubtedly brought misery and real harm to the UK communities they reached.

“His long overdue jailing is the result of years of hard work by the NCA and law enforcement partners in the UK, Europe and Middle East.

“We thank the Dubai Police especially for their excellent work helping us track Moogan and ensuring his return to the UK.

“Fugitives should take note of this case – they can never rest easy. The NCA has a global reach and will never give up hunting them. “

After being extradited to the UK, he told the NCA arresting officer: “You’re not going to have any trouble from me.

“I’m tired now. Get me up to Manny and get me in Cat A. I’m done now.”

Moogan was transported to police custody in Greater Manchester.

In November last year he appeared at Manchester Crown Court and admitted conspiring to import Class A drugs.

He returned to court today and was jailed.

Without his guilty plea and mitigation he would have been sentenced to 20 years.

 

Turkish

In 2015 Two Turkish brothers Ugur and Ufuk Çamdere were charged, went on trial and jailed for 6 years after they were convicted of running a café that secretly operated as a command-and-control centre for top-level drug gangs across Europe, including the UK.

At least two British gangs are known to have used the Café de Ketel in Rotterdam to arrange the safe passage of shipments of drugs from South America, hidden in cargo containers and retrieved by corrupt dock workers.

However, their plan went wrong when 67.5kg of cocaine was not removed from a container at Antwerp in May 2013 and was later seized by the German authorities in Essen.

In a series of co-ordinated raids five months later, the Turkish brothers were also arrested.

At the café, police found more than 100 mobile phones, guns, a radio scanner, money-counting equipment and hundreds of thousands of euros. Other handguns and semi-automatic weapons were found during searches of other properties in Rotterdam.

The Wire

Dutch Detective Jirko Patist had a core team of 20 DNR detectives, with up to 100 officers from other local and special- ist units gathering evidence on half a dozen different consignments in- volving Ugur and Ufuk Çamdere and Dutch conspirators in 2013.

Hundreds of hours of transcripts from Café de Ketel were being pored over by the Dutch prosecutors. An increasing number of addresses in Rotterdam were under round-the- clock surveillance. But when it came to identifying and understanding accurately the accents of the British conspirators Jirko Patist decided he needed help.

NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY, LONDON

Chris Dyer and fellow investigator Mike Lakey, who work on major cases for the NCA, recognised the British men’s accents as being from Essex in the East of England. With footage from Café de Ketel they managed to identify “Tony” as Anthony Wilson from the Essex town of Harlow.

Aged 36, 1.8 metres tall, mus- cular, well-built with a skinhead haircut, Wilson had convictions for petty crime.

The other man was Anthony Den- nis, aged 47, and also from Essex.

Lakey and two colleagues set to work transcribing hundreds of hours of Café de Ketel tapes sent over by Jirko Patist’s office in Rotterdam.

“Our one’s got Rolex Reina 7,” they heard Dennis telling Ugur Çamdere.

“What does that mean beyond Ro- lex being a watch and reina being Spanish for queen?” Dyer asked.

When Anthony Dennis was at the café he led the discussions. “He had a lot of knowledge about law enforcement techniques,” says Dyer. At one point Dennis could be heard asking the Çamderes: “They couldn’t have got a recording device in here could they?”

“We live upstairs,” they reassured him. “It would not be possible.”

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