Mega coffee shop owner faces €27m claim

The public prosecution department will seek to claw back €27.6m from the owner of the country’s biggest cannabis-selling cafe, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday.

The paper says the figure is equivalent to the 58-year-old owner’s earnings during the official investigation between January 2006 and its closure in May 2008.
Owner Meddie Willemsen and 15 members of staff are currently being prosecuted for drugs offences and membership of a criminal organisation.
Officials claim the Checkpoint coffee shop in Terneuzen served up to 3,000 customers a day, or some 10 kg of cannabis. Coffee shops with more than 500 grammes of cannabis on the premises are not covered by the official policy of turning a blind eye to soft drugs.