Amsterdam - The way a special Task Force fights the criminal cannabis cultivation in Brabant since a year should be an example for the rest of the Netherlands. This is what Minister Ivo Opstelten (Security and Justice) said Thursday in a meeting in the Lower House.

In it, the police, municipalities, departments of the Public Ministry and the Tax work closely together to tackle criminal groups that make heaps of money from the cultivation and trafficking of marijuana.

The results of this task force are good, emphasized Opstelten. More than twelve hundred suspects have been arrested, benefits are stopped, illegal constructions are demolished, money has been taken away and nurseries have been dismantled.

'Organized crime must find an organized government against them,' Opstelten said. Only then, according to him, the corrosive drug trade, money laundering and human trafficking can be combated. This not only applies to organized cannabis cultivation in Brabant, but also to criminal gangs from Eastern Europe that keep raids in the Netherlands.