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…
Several prisoners escaped from four Brazilian prisons after authorities announced the suspension of the one-day release programme. This decision was taken as a preventive measure to avoid the spread of the Coronavirus, COVID-19. Honduras is becoming a cocaine producing country in addition to being a transit country. Reporting indicates that, between 2009 and 2020, 12…
Turkish authorities announced that 2384kgs of heroin have been seized as a result of international operational cooperation with five countries and EUROPOL. The seizures are the result of an investigation that followed a seizure of 300kgs of heroin in Genoa, Italy, back in 2018. The biggest seizure of 1105kgs was made in Kazakhstan, 703kgs in Germany, 350kgs…
Three laboratories that produced large quantities of yaba pills (metamphetamines), heroin and Ice were dismantled by the army of Myanmar. The laboratories were located in the heart of the Southeast Asian Golden Triangle. Several European countries, together with EUROPOL, participated in an operation led by France and Finland against criminal groups trafficking online and offline in misused and counterfeit medicines.…
Several suspects of Montenegrin nationality are currently detained in Aruba. They were arrested following the interception of the vessel “Arresa” in which five tonnes of cocaine was discovered onboard. This seizure was the result of an operation led by the Netherlands and Colombia and involved several months of investigation that included Serbian, British and Montenegrin…
The first underground factory producing counterfeit cigarettes has been discovered by the Spanish police in the province of Malaga. The illegal factory had the capacity to produce around 3500 cigarettes per hour. This discovery, which EUROPOL, Lithuania, Poland and the United Kingdom contributed to, was made possible further to the arrest of 20 persons…
14 alleged members of a drug trafficking gang were arrested by the Spanish police in Catalonia following an investigation that started in December 2018 after the discovery and seizure of a large quantity of cocaine in boxes of A4 paper shipped from Brazil. The gang were thought to be laundering the profit of their trafficking…
The Ivory Coast navy seized 411 kg of cocaine and made 5 arrests following the discovery of a ship idling at high sea. The ship was seen to offload the drugs to a smaller vessel that came alongside. The West African coast is vulnerable to illicit drug trafficking, as previous seizures in Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau…
The Director of the EMCDDA presented the EU Drugs market report 2019 to the Committee on Civil liberties, Justice and Home Affairs at the European Parliament in Brussels. The director put emphasis on the fact it is a wake-up call for policymakers looking at the worrying trends of the illicit market which is fast growing, well…
