Convicted Belgian Cocaine Boss Poured Millions Into Luxury Dubai Properties
A Belgian drug lord spent millions of dollars investing in luxury real estate in Dubai. Belgian authorities successfully extradited him today, but it’s unclear what has happened to the profits he reaped from his property ventures in the emirate.
Banner: Geraint Tellem/Robert Harding RF/robertharding via AFP | The Dubai skyline.
Reported by
De Tijd
Knack
Eldiyar Arykbaev
OCCRP
OCCRP
Also published by our partners De Tijd (Belgium, in Flemish) and Knack (Belgium, in Flemish)
October 14, 2026
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Belgian drug lord Nasserdine Tarrahi, who has been convicted of drug-related offenses in three separate cases, was extradited from Dubai to Belgium on October 14, the Antwerp prosecutor’s office confirmed to OCCRP and De Tijd.
Tarrahi, 38, was a senior figure in the “Turtles,” a Belgian-Moroccan gang that specialized in retrieving South American cocaine from containers passing through the port of Antwerp. Later in his career he fled to Dubai, where he continued to run drug trafficking operations from the Emirati city-state, according to the most recent court verdict against him, issued in May.
But although Belgian justice has finally caught up with him, authorities have struggled to confiscate the proceeds of his crimes, which a court in Antwerp estimated could amount to 5 million euros ($5.5 million). They only managed to find the equivalent of around $20,000 in cash, plus an assortment of exercise equipment crammed into an apartment in Antwerp he used as a base for drug trafficking.
Now, OCCRP and its partners in Belgium have learned that Tarrahi had stashed substantial assets abroad: He purchased six luxury properties in Dubai between 2019 and 2021, investing the equivalent of $6.2 million, according to property data obtained by OCCRP.
Although he has sold all the properties since then, the findings suggest he was able to move a significant amount of wealth into Dubai unbeknownst to authorities — and even profit from his real estate deals. Three of his properties were purchased for a total of $3.8 million and sold for $6.6 million three years later. (The sales price of the others is not known.)
About the Data
This story draws on several datasets and leaks obtained by OCCRP and partners about property ownership in Dubai, including our Dubai Unlocked project, a scrape of the Dubai Land Department, and financial data of facilities management firms in Dubai.
He was even able to gain permanent residency in Dubai based on his property holdings — with a visa issued barely a year after he was convicted in Belgium of trafficking drugs from his Dubai home base, OCCRP has learned.
Tarrahi’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. Under Belgian law, Tarrahi has the right to appeal the verdict of the Antwerp court when he arrives back on Belgian soil.
Dubai’s General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs and the UAE’s Ministry of Interior did not respond to requests for comment from OCCRP.
Credit: Elien Melis/Sky Vision/Port of Antwerp-Bruges
The port of Antwerp, where the “Turtles” were active.
Known for financial secrecy and low taxes, Dubai is where many of the world’s rich and powerful go to spend money they are unable to use elsewhere. A 2024 collaborative investigation by OCCRP and partners, Dubai Unlocked, mapped some 800,000 Dubai properties and found that many were owned by sanctioned politicians, alleged criminals, and or public officials and family.
Since then, the United Arab Emirates has passed a new anti-money laundering law that authorities promise will ease cross-border collaboration. The Belgian Justice Ministry says Dubai has been cooperative with a new drive to extradite criminals, but experts say it’s still unclear if the UAE is serious about targeting illicit wealth within its borders.
“Investigative reporting has repeatedly identified Dubai properties linked to individuals implicated in major corruption scandals … yet public information remains limited on whether UAE authorities investigated the potential laundering of illicit proceeds through those properties, and with what results,” said Hugh Jorgensen, the Corrupt Money Flows program lead at Transparency International.
A New Life in Dubai
The desert city is where Tarrahi chose to build a new life after the “Turtles” gang became embroiled in a war with a group of Dutch rivals, sparking a wave of shootings and gangland assassinations across the two countries. (The war between the two groups later served as inspiration for a wildly popular Belgian action film, “Gangsta.”)
It is unclear exactly when he relocated to Dubai, but immigration records obtained by OCCRP show that Tarrahi has visited the Emirates numerous times over the course of the last two decades. He was issued seven UAE visas between 2010 and 2020, according to data from the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security, a UAE government agency responsible for citizenship and residency.
In 2013, in the midst of the “Turtles” gang war, Tarrahi was convicted by an Antwerp court of “jointly committed drug-related offenses.” The verdict was upheld by an appeal court the following year. He was sentenced to two years in prison, with one year suspended. (He spent around five months in pre-trial detention after his initial arrest in 2009, but reporters could not determine if he ever completed the sentence.)
But his criminal conviction didn’t stop him from gaining legal status in Dubai: He was granted a short-term residency visa in 2020 and was able to renew it two years later. In February 2023 the UAE granted him a ten-year visa as a property owner.
He undoubtedly qualified: Between 2019 and 2021, Tarrahi purchased six properties in Dubai for a total of $6.2 million, according to leaked real estate data obtained by OCCRP.
Three of them were flats in the Grand Bleu Tower, a luxury skyscraper with interiors by star fashion designer Elie Saab. As of September 2026, he had sold them all, but documents show that he was being charged service fees for one of the units as recently as the first quarter of 2026.
He also purchased a unit at one of the Bluewaters Residences buildings, on the luxury man-made Bluewaters Island, in December 2019. He paid 5.8 million dirhams ($1.6 million) for the three-bedroom unit, and sold it for 15 million dirhams (over $4 million) just over four years later, according to leaked property data. A tenancy contract shows that he earned the equivalent of around $177,000 renting the apartment out for a year.
Credit: Emmanuel Catteau / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
The Dubai Hills Estate luxury residences under construction in 2019. Nasserdine Tarrahi purchased a property there in 2021.
In March 2021, Tarrahi bought a property in Dubai Hills Estate, a gated community advertised as the “green heart of Dubai,” for the equivalent of $1.3 million. (He sold it later that year).
Just a month later, he acquired a unit in the Marina Vista Tower — a beachfront high-rise with sweeping skyline views and an outdoor swimming pool — for another $1.3 million. The apartment is no longer in Tarrahi’s possession, according to Dubai Land Department data, but it’s unclear when it was sold.
Not long after this property investment spree, Tarrahi was convicted again in Belgium for his involvement with another drug trafficking group, known as the Mixers. In February 2022, he was sentenced in absentia to 5 years for co-perpetration of cocaine trafficking, bribery of a police officer, forgery, money laundering, and participation in a criminal organization.
The Antwerp prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether Belgian authorities at the time asked Dubai to arrest Tarrahi for this conviction.
Still, he continued to run his drug businesses from his Dubai base and give orders to associates in Belgium, according to the verdict in the third drug case against him, issued by an Antwerp court in May.
To communicate, they relied on the encrypted messaging service Sky ECC. Investigators found that Tarrahi used the same passwords across various accounts: “dubai123” and “flapdrol,” which means “fool” in Dutch slang.
How a Canadian Company’s Encrypted Phones Ended Up in the Hands of Criminals Worldwide
From Dubai, he also used cameras to monitor activities at an apartment in Antwerp used by his associates to store and repackage cocaine before sending it on to end buyers. He could even open and close the gates and garage doors remotely.
When police searched the property in June 2023, they found 12 bricks of cocaine and a shopping bag with two firearms inside a parked Mazda car. Another 30 cocaine bricks were found hidden in a secret compartment in a Fiat on the premises.
They also found 30,000 euros’ worth of exercise equipment, like kettlebells, boxing gloves, and a treadmill. These, along with 16,000 Swiss francs (around $17,000) and another approximately 2,000 euros in bank funds, were itemized in the court’s verdict as assets seized from Tarrahi.
The Antwerp prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether the court had been aware of Tarrahi’s six Dubai apartments, but the court’s judgement made no mention of the property. A spokesperson for the federal office responsible for seizures in the Belgian justice system confirmed that there have been no seizures of real estate in Dubai.
A New Era of Cooperation?
Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden has made it a priority to dismantle overseas safe havens for criminals, a push that has seen 22 people extradited from the UAE since she took office in February 2025, including Tarrahi.
A spokesperson for her cabinet told De Tijd that the Justice Ministry is now in talks with Dubai authorities on how they can work together to ensure the seizure of criminal proceeds.
“Building on the success of the extraditions, the aim is to implement a similarly successful collaboration regarding the confiscation of criminal proceeds,” the spokesperson said.
The new UAE anti-money laundering law enacted last year is expected to make it easier to confiscate assets sought by foreign states, since the Emirates will no longer require a separate local investigation before cooperating with asset-freezing and confiscation orders from abroad.
But although the law improves the framework for asset recovery, “assets must first be identified before they can be seized, and a number of policy gaps continue to hinder this process” said Jorgensen of Transparency International.
For example, he said most real estate developers in the UAE are still not covered by anti-money-laundering obligations.
“This means that a criminal or corrupt person can purchase a property or housing project through a developer without the developer being required to conduct any due diligence checks.”
Jodi Vittori, a professor at Georgetown University who studies corruption and illicit finance, said enforcement could also be hindered by a lack of transparency in the autocratic UAE.
“There are theoretical rules and procedures, but at the end of the day, if the person is important enough or has the right connections, they don’t apply, because there’s no rule of law, there’s no accountability, there’s no transparency,” she said
October 14, 2026
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Fact-checking was provided by the OCCRP Fact-Checking Desk.Research and data expertise was provided by OCCRP’s Research & Data Team.
Reported by
De Tijd
Knack
Eldiyar Arykbaev
OCCRP
Investigative Editor, OCCRP
Based in the Netherlands, Ingrid Gercama joined OCCRP in 2025 as an investigative editor. Before joining OCCRP, she worked as a freelance investigative journalist reporting on crime, the environment, and politics. Her work has been published in more than fifteen countries, with bylines in major outlets including The Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Ingrid has uncovered the illegal smuggling of tropical birds to the EU, reported on the operations of Balkan organized crime groups in the Netherlands and Belgium, revealed fraud with EU funds in Romania, and covered anti-corruption protests in Serbia and Georgia. Her cross-border investigations have contributed to law enforcement actions and she has won multiple awards.
Prior to becoming a journalist, Ingrid worked as an applied anthropologist in Ebola outbreaks in Africa, as well as in humanitarian aid and research. She studied cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and holds a master’s degree in international development studies.
Also published by our partners De Tijd (Belgium, in Flemish) and Knack (Belgium, in Flemish)
