The entrance to the Traben-Trarbarch bunker in a German police photo.LKA Rheinland PFALZ Police
Traben-Trarbarch, a German city on the banks of the Moselle and a few kilometers from the Belgian border, is a place where trout is fished and fruity white wine is produced. This haven of peace in which nothing remarkable had happened since the fall of the Third Reich witnessed on September 26, 2019, an unusual event, the largest raid in its history. That day, nine alleged white-collar criminals were arrested in the most famous of the local restaurants, located in an old hydraulic mill. Among them was Xennt, a Dutch citizen who had just turned 60 at the time, a guy who looked like a
neo-hippie
guru.
, disheveled and dressed in extravagant sloppiness (psychedelic sunglasses, military-style jackets, waistcoats, dark trench coats ...), whom the German police consider the leader of one of the largest cybercrime networks in the world.
Xennt, according to eyewitnesses, joked with the officers at the time of the arrest and assured them that he would go out as soon as he could contact his lawyer. Almost two years later, he is still behind bars, accused of hosting, financing and advising several hundred illicit companies, from Pirate Bay to WikiLeaks to arms and cryptocurrency dealers, money laundering and clandestine pornography. Several of his partners have also passed through police agencies, his two adult children, Xyonn and Yennoah (known as X and Y), and his first wife, Angelique, a Dutch woman of Antillean origin who he divorced in 2000 but with whom he continued. collaborating closely.
Xennt was the most notorious but also the most elusive of the Traben-Trarbarch inhabitants. It was established in this corner of the Rhineland in 2012. At that time, the city council was looking for a buyer for one of its largest facilities, a complex of military barracks and a five-story nuclear shelter that had once belonged to the meteorological service of the armed forces. of the Federal Republic of Germany. Built in 1978, the nuclear-proof bunker was a ghastly reminder of the Cold War. A dark and granite underground labyrinth of several thousand square kilometers that had been discontinued a few months before and from which the local authorities could not wait to get rid of. The only offer they received was that of Xennt, born Herman-Johan Verkwoert-Derksen, a native of Arnhem, in the Netherlands.
In October of that year, the Dutch businessman appeared at one of the meetings of the Traben-Trabarch citizens' assembly to explain to them what his business model was and thus overcome the reluctance of the neighbors. He told them that he planned to turn the bunker into the headquarters of his international digital services business and that he was committed to creating more than 100 jobs in the area in a maximum period of two years. As British writer Ed Caesar explains in an exhaustive investigative report for
The New Yorker
magazine
, “Most of those attending that meeting came away convinced that Xennt was not a trustworthy guy and that the business he was involved in he was dedicating seemed a bit murky ”. Despite everything, in the absence of other offers, the city council decided to close the deal.
In the following weeks, a discreet fleet of cars with tinted windows landed in the town bringing office furniture and computer equipment of all kinds.
Xennt installed his office and his home in one of the underground floors while his family and most of the workers preferred to settle in the outer barracks.
They built a gate and a kind of palisade to surround the enclosure and began to conduct their business in a discreet way and with their backs to the city.
On the left, Xennt.
To his right, a mobster with whom he was related: George Mitchell "The Penguin".
The photograph was shot in Germany, in November 2015.
For Xennt, this was the second attempt to find a permanent headquarters for his business project, dubbed, eccentrically and pompously, the Independent Republic of Cyberbunker. Between 1995 and 2002 it was installed in a former NATO bunker in the Dutch city of Goes, on the shores of the North Sea. There he began to dedicate himself to activities related to the so-called
Dark Web
,
or dark Internet, with which he would very soon have a turnover of more than one million euros per year.
In essence, Xennt offered its customers bulletproof online hosting. In other words, the possibility of conducting all kinds of digital business with a very high level of confidentiality, protected by a complex encryption system. In its first stage, Cyberbunker mainly hosted pornographic and online gambling websites. In 2002, the bunker suffered a random fire. During the firefighting tasks, firefighters discovered that an MDMA and methamphetamine laboratory had been installed in one of its corners. Xennt claimed that it was a space rented to another company and that it was unaware of the use that was being made of it, but could not prevent that, after a long litigation, its license for commercial activities was canceled.
Between 2002 and 2012, the Dutchman was a wandering businessman, who settled in various makeshift headquarters in various parts of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany without completely renouncing his old obsession with bunkers. The one in Traben-Trarbach was the answer to his prayers, the perfect headquarters for a company that by now had proclaimed itself an independent republic. An island surfer chaired by Xennt himself (who, in addition to being Prime Minister, considered himself the Royal Highness of Cyberbunker, something a bit paradoxical in the case of a republic) and who intended to abide by its own rules, offering a private license to
hackers
, traffickers of all kinds , independent producers of
hardware, software
and mobile telephony or
online
commerce portals
like The Silky Road, the murkiest and most grainy of the dark Internet.
The company relied on German law, which specifies that hosting companies cannot be held responsible for the illegal activities of the pages they host unless it is proven that they knew their content.
Xennt prospered thanks to this loophole exploited with opportunism and unscrupulousness.
What brought him downfall was the claustrophobia of one of his most illustrious associates.
Specifically, that of the Irish mobster George
The Penguin
Mitchell.
As explained by journalist Nicola Tallant in
Sunday World
The Penguin, the leader of a drug trafficking ring that became one of the largest in Europe in the late 1990s, was the only Cyberbunker customer who did not agree to meet with Xennt underground. The bunker seemed like a dark, inhospitable and unsanitary cemetery, so business appointments between the guru of the underground network and the much-hunted dealer took place in a pub in town. The two partners binged on almost raw meat washed down with white wine and then spent hours sipping drinks. Xennt arrived at the premises in his white BMW X6 and rarely went beyond the second
gin and tonic
: from there, he ordered traces of hot chocolate while his partner continued with the alcohol transfer.
In the summer of 2016, an Irish tourist recognized Mitchell during one of those public dates. Thus began a police investigation in the course of which the communications of Xennt and its employees were spied to discover to what extent the employer was informed of the illicit activities of his clients. The intercepted conversations showed that Xennt not only knew in detail what the business model of the hosted websites was, but also offered logistical assistance and advice to help them go unnoticed. The man who was fascinated by bunkers does not give personal interviews on the advice of his lawyer, but he was willing to answer some of Ed Caesar's questions by email. In his short writing, Xennt shows himself to be a non-judgmental entrepreneur,willing to defend any digital business from the interference of the states and their "absurd laws and rules" with the sole exception of child pornography and terrorism. Everything indicates that his instincts as an anarcho-capitalist outlaw and his Mephistophelic pact with the hidden face of the Internet are going to cost him dearly. If he were born again, he would do his best not to associate with claustrophobic people again.
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