How does a bus driver get twelve properties? That is (or at least was) not so difficult at all, it turned out yesterday before the Maastricht court.He allegedly helped a drug gang by renting out premises from which narcotics were traded. But bus driver Gé D.(49) from Maastricht claimed yesterday with great firmness that he never knew that his tenants were involved in drug trafficking. He wanted to supplement his meager pension by buying properties in Maastricht and renting them out, that was all. The fact that, as a simple bus driver, he managed to own twelve properties at all was astonishing. Yet it turned out to be almost child's play: he simply took out mortgages with various banks. They did not ask if he already had mortgages. Now they do, he noticed in 2007. Furthermore, these banks apparently do not care. As long as they get their money. And they got it. Prosecutor Maria El Jerrari argued, however, that D. managed to acquire his properties, spread all over Maastricht, by committing forgery. After all, he signed mortgage deeds that almost always stated that he would occupy the property in question himself. In the knowledge that he would rent it out. But that is not forgery, thought D.'s counsel Serge Weening, that at most constitutes breach of contract. Either way, D. was renting out his homes.
In a way that clearly astonished the court. Sometimes he would rent out three at the same time to the same tenant. "But the latter then acted as a kind of broker," he said. Sometimes, too, he gave a potential tenant he barely knew the keys to a property and then went on vacation himself. "Naive and stupid." The fact is that in April 2008, hard drugs were found in some of D.'s homes. "Maybe I should have been more careful," he said. Prosecutor El Jerrari asked the court to acquit D. of membership in a criminal organization. But, even if his role was "more limited than thought," according to the officer, he at least knowingly ran the risk of dealing from his premises. She demanded 240 hours of community service and a suspended prison sentence. He spent almost six months on remand: lawyer Weening thinks that is enough. In any case D. still has a confiscation claim pending; the judiciary has seized his properties. The court will decide on October 15. As for the drug gang: eight members have previously been sentenced to prison terms ranging from one month to seven years. Two are fugitives; one ran off during a furlough.
