News Briefing – Week of 22 June

22/06/2020 – French customs seized 552 kg of cannabis in a lorry that left Spain and was transporting fruits and vegetable to the Rungis market. 23/06/2020 – Wildlife trafficking in Colombia is prolific. The fight against the wildlife trafficking industry is not yet fully operational because the country is not yet equipped with the adequate legislation and technologies…

CRIMJUST training courses on “specialised controlled deliveries”

CRIMJUST, one of the component projects of the Global Illicit Flows Programme of the European Union, in collaboration with the Iberoamerican Network of Anti-drug Prosecutors (Red de Fiscales Antidroga de Iberoamérica) successfully implemented the first two of a series of four training courses on specialised controlled delivery. Designed to tackle transnational drug trafficking the training…

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 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 23 March

  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…

News Briefing – Week of 2 March

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.…

An autumn highlight in the EU’s capital: the first EU Crime Week brought law enforcement, DEVCO project partners, EU agencies and services together to address organised crime

For 5 days, from 25 to 29 November, participants exchanged on coordination and synergies, but also challenges in the fight against illicit trafficking, and in particular drug trafficking, both inside and outside Europe. The launch of the EU Drug Market’s Report on 26 November underpinned discussions on the current global drug production and European consumption,…

Newsbriefing – Week of 16 September

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…