News Briefing – Week of 20 April

As the Mexican government concentrate its resources on pandemic control, with the peak of COVID-19 expected in May, criminal groups continue to position themselves so as to strengthen their control and influence within the states, cities and regions they operate in. The COVID-19 pandemic in Peru has hit the cocaine trade in Peru. Cocaine prices have sharply…

News Briefing – Week of 13 April

700 kg of cocaine was seized at the Yokohama seaport in Japan in March 2020. The drugs were hidden in a container transporting boxes of bananas. According to the Japanese authorities, the drugs more than likely arrived by mistake as a result of traffickers not being able to unload at ports prior to Yokohama.    Over 1600…

First year of implementation of COLIBRI

COLIBRI, the GIFP project with a special focus on general aviation The project “Monitoring and Controlling General Aviation along the cocaine route”, or COLIBRI, is a technical assistance and capacity-building programme part of the Global Illicit Flows Programme since its in inception in January 2019. It has been conceived to bring together the skills necessary…

News Briefing – Week of 6 April

Heroin production is on the rise in the Golden Triangle according to the Narcotics Control Board secretary-general in Thailand and as seizure along the border between Myanmar and Laos suggest. The Golden Triangle is one of the largest areas where opium is grown.   A large criminal network involved in fraud, money laundering and social…

News Briefing – Week of 30 March

Malaysian customs discovered six tonnes of African pangolin scales hidden beneath a layer of sacks containing cashew nuts. This was the first seizure at Port Klang since September 2017 and may indicate that  traffickers are responding to greater security at other Malaysian ports as well as ports in Singapore where, last year, 40 tonnes of pangolin scales was…