Beauty products confiscated from crooks are distributed to Amsterdam's poor

A supermarket for very poor families in Amsterdam received goods seized by the public prosecutor's office as part of a nationwide pilot project to use proceeds from crime to support the most vulnerable in society.

The Fris supermarket, where financially disadvantaged people can shop for free, received a donation of 10 beauty products as a “symbolic first step”.

“These are brand new products worth between 100 and 150 euros that have been seized by the public prosecutor's office… This way we can help the people of Amsterdam West a little. And besides, it is much more sustainable than destroying them,” deputy public prosecutor Jeroen Steenbrink told Parool.

The Fris supermarket in Osdorp was opened last year by local Abdelhamid Idrissi and provides local families with free basic food items such as bread, vegetables, couscous, chickpeas and eggs.

Idrissi has now set aside a small area for beauty products, which include brands such as L'Oréal and Rituals. “We didn't have any luxury items. Now we can offer the people who come here something to pamper themselves with,” he told the newspaper.

Goods seized during raids are usually kept for a while and then destroyed or, if very valuable, sold, with the money going to the state. In 2019, for example, the sale of designer handbags and shoes confiscated from suspects brought in €232,000.

However, a few years ago, prosecutors developed a plan to transfer proceeds of crime to people in neighborhoods that may have suffered from criminal activity.

A ship used to smuggle cocaine was donated to the Rotterdam Maritime Academy, while sleeping bags used by people who remove smuggled drugs from port containers were distributed to the homeless.

The message is that crime does not pay, the prosecutor said.