An alleged billionaire cocaine kingpin said to have smuggled hundreds of millions of pounds of the illicit drug into Europe has been arrested in Dubai.
Belgian citizen Otham El Ballouti, 36, was on the run and faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly planning the distribution of cocaine worth €275 million in 2021.
The boss, known as ‘El Patrón’ of the ruthless Mocro mafia, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates as a ‘high-value target’, according to Belgian media.
In September he was sentenced to seven years in prison in Antwerp for importing 800 kilos of cocaine.
He also faces a possible 20-year prison sentence, as well as an €800,000 fine, after prosecutors were able to access countless messages and images as proof that El Ballouti was making “dizzying amounts of money.”
Ballouti has been described by Belgian police as “the most imaginative drug criminal in Antwerp”.
The city’s mayor, Bar De Wever, also called him “the richest man in Antwerp” and he is said to be worth billions.
El Ballouti fled to Dubai in 2015 and has been living in a high-rise apartment said to be worth €1.5 million.
Othman El Ballouti has been arrested in Dubai after allegedly smuggling cocaine worth hundreds of millions of euros to Europe.
El Ballouti fled to Dubai in 2015 and has been living in a high-rise apartment worth €1.5 million.
He also allegedly owned or controlled property worth more than €33 million, but has insisted his money comes from his luxury goods business.
‘I’m not the big drug lord that people want me to be. I dare say that I am a good person,” he told the Dutch newspaper Gazet van Antwerp in 2023.
“There is no blood on my hands.”
Meanwhile, his brother Younes is a key player in the illicit drug trade in Belgium and was previously convicted of cocaine smuggling.
Younes was also kidnapped in 2017 by mafia rivals in France, and his brother had to negotiate his release by paying what is believed to be around €5 million.
He is also the uncle of 11-year-old Firdaous, who made headlines last year after she was shot in the chest and died after being caught in crossfire between drug gangs.
It comes after a Belgian court jailed dozens of people in the country’s biggest drug trial, after 120 defendants were accused of involvement in international cocaine and cannabis trafficking.
The Belgian city of Antwerp is considered the European capital of cocaine.
Last week, an investigating judge in Antwerp was forced to go into hiding after receiving threats from a gangster.