21/06 Phishing gang behind several million euros worth of losses busted in Belgium and the Netherlands. The suspects sent emails and text messages with phishing links to bogus banking websites. A cross-border operation, supported by Europol and involving the Belgian Police and the Dutch Police, resulted in the dismantling of this organised crime group involved…
07/04 Cape Verdean police seize over 5 tonnes of cocaine. Cape Verdean police seized more than five tonnes of cocaine at sea onboard a fishing boat from Brazil, with the help of American agents. 09/04 Major cocaine smuggling gang busted in Algeciras with 3,500 kilos of the drug found. A joint operation involving officers from…
15/02 45 people arrested in the crackdown on Albanian-speaking criminals and cocaine trafficking. An international operation involving judicial and law enforcement authorities in eight countries has resulted in the takedown of one of Europe’s most active Albanian-speaking cocaine trafficking networks Europe. On this occasion, Eurojust and Europol supported a series of actions carried out in…
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…
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…
In a new report, Human Rights Watch documents the rising violence linked to illegal deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon. Over the past five years, 28 environmental enforcement agents and indigenous people opposed to illegal logging have been killed by organised crime groups who profit from deforestation. More than 300 people have been murdered in the last…
British authorities seized 250 kilos of cocaine and arrested six people aboard yacht off the coast of Wales. The private vessel was heading from Latin America to the UK. The drug had a street value of 20 million euros. Slovenian police dismantled a vast human trafficking network. The group was involved in trafficking some 280…
Customs seized 1.5 tonnes of cocaine on a container ship in Hamburg, Germany. The ship came from Rio Grande, Brazil, and was heading for Antwerp, Belgium. The haul value is estimated at about 350 million euros. This comes a month after Germany seized a record 4.5 tonnes of cocaine in Hamburg. Conservative candidate Alejandro Giammattei…
The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, also known as “El Chapo”, was sentenced to life in prison in the US. He formerly ran the Sinaloa cartel in northern Mexico, which was the biggest supplier of drugs to the US. He was accused of trafficking hundreds of tonnes of cocaine into the country. A new aerial…
The price of opium dropped by 90 percent over the past year and a half in Mexico, due to speculation, high heroin production and changes in the supply and demand of illegal drugs in the US. Fentanyl, a synthetic opiate, is increasingly replacing heroin. This is driving farmers away from poppy cultivation. Mexican law enforcement…
