The agents of the Police anti-drug unit began to be surprised by the usual presence of a businessman from the technology and real estate sector, of Swedish nationality and settled on the Costa del Sol, in those meetings that they monitored from a distance. It was the winter of 2019 and the police, alerted by their colleagues in Sweden, were tracking in Spain some leaders of the gangs dedicated to drug trafficking and contract killings in that country. The businessman turned out to be Joakim Peter Broberg, son of the prosperous builder Lars Gunnar Sunne, husband of the mayor of Marbella. Joakim had become a member of the ‘Mocro Mafia’, the criminal phenomenon that has put the Swedish state in check for its ruthless use of violence.
With one death a week in shootings, in a country that does not reach 10.5 million inhabitants, the activity of organized crime occupied a good part of the last electoral campaign in Sweden. The emblematic country of European social democracy finally changed the sign of its government for another conservative, which governs with the support of a far right that obtained 20% of the votes.
Hitmen and drug gangs made up of second-generation Swedes who grew up in ghettos are capable of attacking their rivals with grenades and assault rifles in broad daylight. The nickname ‘Mocro’ refers to the origin of the parents or grandparents of the members of the mafias (Morocco/Morocco), the country from which the hashish and marijuana sold in Sweden and other northern European countries come from.
The term Mocro Mafia was coined in the Netherlands, where the phenomenon is even more serious. The security of the heiress to the Dutch throne, Amalia, and the Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, has recently been reinforced after the discovery of traces of organized crime.
The Costa del Sol becomes a place of storage and transit, but also a destination for their profits. This is where Joakim Broberg, the stepson of the mayor of Marbella, comes into play, at the head of a wide web of companies in the area and offshore territories, ideal for laundering drug profits.
According to the National Court judge Manuel García Castellón, Joakim allegedly belongs to a plot in which active members of the ‘Mocro Mafia’ participate. He does it in drug transfer and money laundering tasks, the latter activity in which Lars Gunnar Sunne Broberg, the octogenarian husband of the senator and mayor of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, would also have participated with his companies. Father and son, the judge and the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office attribute membership to a criminal organization and money laundering. Joakim is added to the crime of drug trafficking.
Barcelona, September 14, 2018. The policemen who drive a camouflaged car have to stop following the three Swedish citizens who have landed at El Prat airport early in the morning. There is too much traffic and the red Ferrari 458 Italia gets lost after leaving the Pau Claris car park.
Swedish Swedish police have written about one of the occupants of the red Ferrrari: “Chihab Lamouri is a knowledgeable drug trafficker who comes from a suburb of Stockholm, Varby Gard, who is credited with selling large consignments of drugs. His participation in several of the serious violent conflicts that are taking place in Stockholm is also known”. At the time, Lamouri was accused of three murders and the distribution of cocaine and marijuana in the suburbs of Stockholm through boys, “some as young as 15 years”. Lamouri is currently serving a sentence of 17 years and 10 months in a Swedish prison.
Tangier, February 5, 2019. On the ferry that connects Tarifa with the Moroccan port, two groups of friends have departed, at different times but on the same day. Udyco believes that it is a high-level meeting for drug trafficking and money laundering.
One of the groups is led by Joakim Broberg, who is accompanied by a common criminal from the Costa del Sol, and one of the key characters in the plot. This is Anders Nilsson, a Swede also settled on the Costa del Sol who acts as a link, along with Ahmed Cinkitas, between Broberg and the ‘Mocro Mafia’ based in Sweden. Cinkitas was one of Chief Lamouri’s companions on his visit to Barcelona, where he lives.
The Civil Guard had already detected the first contacts between the stepson of the mayor of Marbella and the two Swedes settled in Spain in 2017 and 2018. In the other group that traveled to Tangier that day is Yassin McHater, considered by the Swedish Police as the logistics manager of the organization, responsible for the transfer and hiding of the drug that comes from Morocco, passes through Andalusia and ends up in Sweden. McHater’s group detected that day the geolocation device that the Police had placed in his vehicle.
Marbella, May 29, 2019. The meetings in which Joakim Broberg participated led the Unit against Drugs and Organized Crime (Udyco) to request the telephone intervention of the businessman. The surprise was that the mayor’s stepson bragged about the power of the Popular Party in Marbella, in the neighboring towns of the Costa del Sol and even in the regional government, as well as the benefits it brought him, for example in building permits.
“Basically, we have fucking Andalusia,” Joakim said by phone three days after the 2019 municipal elections, in which the PP had swept Estepona, Benahavís (where his father and stepmother have a €12 million mansion), and in Marbella itself. “El Calvo and the three technicians who gave us our license are sitting here. You remember? He’s kind of the boss there. He is not the mayor but he is the head of the technical changes regarding licenses”, says Brobert. And he adds: “They have won, an absolute majority.”
The agents of the Unit against Economic and Fiscal Crime addressed a report to the Central Investigating Court number 6 in July 2019 in which they concluded: “According to the telephone interception, Joamim Broberg would be using the important influences he has for the benefit own, with respect to the municipalities in which it carries out its activity in collaboration with its partner Mark Holmen, and may be perpetrating crimes related to corruption.
Neither the judge, at that time the judge in the case, Alejandro Abascal, nor the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office considered that they were sufficient evidence to open a separate piece or deduce testimony to another court for crimes of prevarication and embezzlement, as the Anti-Corruption Brigade of the Policeman. That incipient line of investigation was aborted, as is evident in the summary, where there are no more allusions to the alleged corruption.
Stockholm, November 17, 2021. The Södertörn District Court reports sentences in a major trial against one of the Mocro Mafia networks. Chihab Lamouri, the capo who was detected by the Police in Barcelona, in the company of the links with Joakim Broberg, is sentenced to 17 years and 10 months in prison.
The trial is very mediatic and not only because of Lamouri. Yasin Mahamoud, artistically known as Yasin, is a very popular rapper in Sweden, he had even been named artist of the year. In the same trial as Lamouri, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for participating in the plan to kidnap a rival musician.
Anders Nilsson or Ahmed Cinkitas were arrested in Spain and are being processed in the same case by the National High Court as Joakim and Lars Gunnar Broberg. The arrest of the octogenarian businessman occurred in February 2021 in Marbella. His son, who was in Brazil, was arrested in that country, extradited and spent nine months in provisional prison in Spain. This month of November, the current judge in the case, Manuel García Castellón, has summoned those under investigation to inform them of the indictment and take their statements.