Kinahan crime ally Ridouan Taghi’ s lawyer cousin jailed by Dutch court

Youssef Taghi, the 39-year-old relative of the suspected criminal gang leader played a “key role” in Taghi’s organisation, the court in Amsterdam found.

He made an “essential contribution” to the organisation and was “an indispensable link” for Taghi while he abused his confidential position as a lawyer in a “very sophisticated way,” the court stated.

According to the court, the Youssef Taghi file is an “example of how organized crime penetrates the upper world” and thus “seriously undermines the rule of law.”

By abusing his role as a lawyer, Youssef Taghi has "seriously undermined" confidence in his profession, according to the court.

“This has major social consequences because politicians are now talking about measures to limit the freedom of lawyers in contact with their clients.”

It has been reported locally that the aim of his cooperation with Taghi was, among other things, to help Taghi escape or break out of prison.

Ridouan Taghi, who is currently in custody in the high-security prison in Vught, is the main suspect in the massive Marengo trial, which revolves around multiple assassinations and attempts.

His cousin became one of his lawyers in March 2021 and visited him at the Vught prison many times.

“Over time, the judiciary discovered that the conversations between the two men were not about legal matters but criminal issues,” it has been reported. “Youssef acted as messenger, passing messages between Taghi in prison and alleged accomplices in the outside world.”

Police arrested Youssef on October 8, 2021 during a visit to Taghi, after the two were secretly filmed and wiretapped.

He has been in custody since his arrest and had been looking at a seven-year jail sentence as demanded by the Public Prosecution Service.

However, the court came to a lower sentence because it did not find it conclusively proven that he had passed on all the messages in the file. It is also not clear which crimes actually occurred because of these messages being passed on.

A leader of the notorious Mocro Mafia, Dutch media claim Taghi was behind the murder of well-known crime journalist Peter De Vries who had been advising and acting as a confidant for a witness in a case against Taghi, when he was gunned down in Amsterdam in July.

Investigations by the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) established that Taghi who is alleged to have formed a European 'super-mafia' with Daniel Kinahan, as well as other senior criminals, was a prominent guest at Kinahan's wedding in Dubai in July 2017 while he was on the run from police in his own country.

The super cartel also included Raffaele Imperiale, who has become a State witness as he faces serious criminal charges in Italy.