End of the Dubai dream for Europe's drug lords?

Drug lords like Sean McGovern, a top lieutenant of the Kinahan cartel, and Faissal Taghi -- son of the infamous head of the Dutch-Moroccan Mocro Maffia -- used to hang out and party in Dubai's glitzy hotels and restaurants without a care in the world. In 2022, Europol's Operation Desert Light revealed the existence of a mostly Dubai-based "super cartel" headed by six figures including Daniel Kinahan that controlled a third of the cocaine coming into Europe. The emirate's ancestral "hawala" banking system, which allows cash to be transferred without money actually moving, has allowed drug lords to invest heavily in property and other high-end businesses there with little trace. Since then "Bibi" Bouguettaia has again been arrested along with one of Belgium's top traffickers, Othman El Ballouti, whom Brussels has been trying to extradite for years, official sources told AFP. But a French judicial source told AFP that Dubai has never seized "any assets for any foreign financial authority" despite a major influx of Russian business figures since the war in Ukraine started nearly three years ago.