This concerns the record label El Chapo Productions, named after a Mexican drug lord and founded in Amsterdam in 2016. El Chapo Productions will release music from rappers Boef, Lijpe and Ismo until 2020.
For example, in 2017 the three rappers jointly created the song ‘Who talks, goes’, a motto in the underworld that traitors are liquidated. The Amsterdam and Utrecht underworld war is still in full swing. “Ha, it’s just Boef man. Lijpe. Ismo. El Chapo Productions! Prrrr,” the song begins.
‘Look at my plan’
A connection between the Taghi family and El Chapo Productions comes to light thanks to the encrypted messaging service Ennetcom, the code of which the police managed to crack in 2017. Suddenly, detectives can read 3.6 million messages that come directly from the criminal environment. According to the police, Ridouan Taghi’s family, who is hiding in Dubai, also uses Ennetcom.
One of the Ennetcom accounts that the police attribute to someone from the Taghi family clearly mentions El Chapo Productions. According to the police, the message was addressed to Ridouan Taghi and was sent on April 18, 2016: “Hahahaha look at my plan. We are managers, I faissal abdo and you!! (..) The crook clip cannot be released until Elchapo production is there Then we will earn at least 100,000 euros at least hahaha, those are my plans!!”
The detective who worked out the official report explains the message as follows: “The sender discusses a plan. The name “faissal” probably refers to Faissal Taghi, the son of Ridouan Taghi.” Faissal Taghi, born in 2000, was only 16 years old at the time.
Link met Dubai
The fact that El Chapo Productions has ties with Dubai is evident from its own promotional material that appears online. The Facebook account contains photos of the logo, a lion’s head. To its left is AMS, to its right is DXB. These are the airport codes for Amsterdam and Dubai.
Crook not suspected
Faissal Taghi was arrested in Dubai in August and is reportedly still in custody there. The Public Prosecution Service in the Netherlands has requested his extradition. The Public Prosecution Service suspects him of participating in a criminal organization whose aim is international drug trafficking, money laundering and the preparation of violent crimes. It is not known whether he is also suspected of money laundering through El Chapo Productions.
El Chapo’s owner, Mohamed K., is suspected of money laundering. His criminal case is expected to continue in early 2024.
Rappers Boef, Lijpe and Ismo are not suspected of money laundering. It has not been proven whether they were aware that El Chapo Productions appears to be connected to underworld practices. Boef does not want to respond substantively. RTL Nieuws has made several attempts to contact Lijpe and Ismo. That contact did not occur.
El Chapo Productions will continue to release rap songs into 2019, which often include a warm greeting, i.e. shoutout, to the label. For example, ‘When the sun shines’ by Lijpe begins with the following text: “We run fast until we move to a warm country. Just like El Chapo’s fighters on the other side.”
Money laundering
Investigation into El Chapo Productions’ corporate structure points to criminal interference. The Amsterdam record label is part of two companies, the top one of which is controlled by the now 48-year-old Mohamed K. from Osdorp. The police consider K. to be a drug trafficker and business associate of the Taghi’s. He and his brother appear in the police investigation 26Dunbar, which revolves around drug trafficking and the laundering of more than 7.5 million euros.
Several well-established sources report to RTL News and Follow The Money that El Chapo Productions is part of the money laundering suspicion in 26Dunbar. The songs and video clips released by the record label may therefore have been financed with drug money. The criminal trial against Mohamed K. and his co-suspects is currently on hold, pending several witness hearings.
‘El Chapo, Putin!’
When it turns out in 2017 that all Ennetcom messages are in the hands of the police, criminals will switch to other encrypted messaging services such as Encrochat and Sky ECC. But those platforms also appear to be unable to withstand the police’s cyber department, causing messages that the police attribute to the Taghi family to be cracked again.
Taghi’s eldest son Faissal is said to have communicated on Sky ECC under multiple account names. One of them is Genie. The other is Putin Chapo. His nickname in the criminal environment is Putin. Chapo could be a reference to the record label. It is the reason that the police suspect that Faissal Taghi is pulling the strings there. The beginning of Boef’s song Scars, which will be released at the end of 2017, is remarkable in that context: “Ha, it’s just Boef man, El Chapo, Putin, raahhh!”
In 2018, the police received more and more indications that Ridouan Taghi was behind several underworld murders and was hiding in Dubai. The Dutch police are dependent on the Dubai Police to have Taghi traced and arrested. A meeting about this is planned for September 12, 2018 in Dubai.
Prior to that consultation, the Dutch police send information to Dubai that could lead to Taghi’s whereabouts. According to an official report, he is hiding at two addresses. The police also write: “Taghi’s sons and brother-in-law are involved in the record label El Chapo Productions. This record label made film recordings in Dubai using a Lamborghini with license plate [kenteken].”
It is almost inevitable that the police are referring to the video clip of Boef’s song Lauw, which will be released in 2017 by El Chapo Productions. Boef gets out of a rented orange Lamborghini Aventador, raps in front of a private helicopter and sails with young women in a yacht off the coast of Dubai. It is a music video where no expense seems to have been spared.
‘Real criminal subversion’
If money laundering via record label El Chapo Productions can be proven, there is real criminal undermining, says criminologist Robby Roks, affiliated with Erasmus University Rotterdam. “Because in this example we see very clearly the interweaving of the underworld and the upper world. If money laundering is proven, you see that criminals give drug money an apparently legal origin through a legal structure, in this case a rap label.”
Although there are often links between rappers and crime, Roks does not want to blame rap culture. “We naturally see such constructions more broadly. Consider, for example, criminal interference in (indoor) football clubs, but also in the form of investments in real estate and catering.”
The connections between the rap world and crime may say more about a shared origin, according to the criminologist. “It is music from the street, about the street, and comes from neighborhoods where we see the necessary problems. And these are precisely the neighborhoods where we see more than average crime. In that sense, they are more branches of the same tree.”
Shooting pizza delivery man
There is another connection between the rap world and Taghi’s organization. Already in 2016, Lijpe released the song Eng on another label. The video clip shows a man dressed in a white camouflage suit waving a Kalashnikov rifle from the open roof of a car. The extra will be identified later. It turns out that Zakaria A., alias the shooting pizza delivery man, was Ridouan Taghi’s co-suspect in the Marengo trial. A. is suspected, among other things, of involvement in the murder of crime blogger Martin Kok.
There is also a clear link to Ridouan Taghi in the 26Dunbar trial, in which director Mohamed K. of El Chapo Productions is on trial. The co-suspect in that trial, Khalid B. (49), had previously rented an apartment on Louise Avenue in Brussels where Taghi was said to have been hiding.
‘Not aware of anything’
Both lawyers in the 26Dunbar trial and the Public Prosecution Service do not want to comment during the criminal case. RTL News has tried to rebuttal to Faissal Taghi. The Public Prosecution Service says that no lawyer has yet presented himself on his behalf. Ridouan Taghi’s lawyers say they cannot respond.
Ridouan Taghi was arrested in Dubai in December 2019 and remains in prison in Vught. He has been sentenced to life in prison. El Chapo Productions will be deregistered from the Chamber of Commerce in 2022.
Rapper Boef does not want to answer substantive questions, such as whether he has had contact with members of the Taghi family, or what his shoutout to Putin exactly means. His management reports: “Boef is an artist who has been releasing music for years under various labels and he is not aware of anything else.”
2023-09-23 04:04:52
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