23.01.24 – Peruvian Gold Mining Gangs Launch Increasingly Brazen Attacks. The growth of gold mining gangs in Peru’s La Libertad province has led to a deteriorating security situation, with unprecedented attacks on security forces and one of the country’s largest mining companies on the rise. A group of approximately 100 armed actors stormed a police convoy in Pataz, La Libertad, which was transporting five alleged members of a gold mining gang on January 7, according to press reports confirmed by Peruvian police. Four of the five detainees were freed, and no police were injured in the incident, which comes amid months of rising violence in Pataz. The area is home to Peru’s largest subterranean gold mine, which is owned by the Poderosa mining company.
26.01.24 – Ecuador: 21.5 tonnes of cocaine destroyed as country battles organised crime. Police in Ecuador have destroyed 21.5 tonnes (21,500kg) of cocaine, seized as part of the country’s military-led crackdown on organised crime. The huge haul was seized over the weekend, found in a storage space under a pig farm in the city of Vinces, in the west of Ecuador. The drugs were found on Sunday stored in hundreds of blocks, officials said.
26.01.24 – 15 arrested in intercontinental crackdown against Nigerian crime syndicates. Between 7 and 9 December 2023, Europol coordinated a massive international operation targeting Nigerian criminal networks active in the EU and abroad. 16 partners from four continents joined forces to fight poly-criminal Nigerian criminal networks responsible for a multitude of serious crimes. This unprecedented international operation, supported by EMPACT, was conducted by law enforcement from across Europe, Africa, South America and North America. 468 law enforcement officers took part in the action day. The crackdown targeted Nigerian criminals responsible for crimes such as the smuggling and distribution of drugs, trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation, fraud, illegal waste smuggling, and money laundering.
26.01.24 – $150m cryptocurrency seizure following US-UK cooperation. The head of a multi-million-dollar drug enterprise has pleaded guilty to supplying hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs on a global scale. Banmeet Singh, 40, of Haldwani, India, sold the drugs on dark web marketplaces, before personally shipping or arranging their shipment from Europe to destinations across the world. The investigation into Singh was led by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and supported by UK partners including the National Crime Agency, Crown Prosecution Service and UK Central Authority. It resulted in the largest single cryptocurrency and cash seizure in DEA history, worth around $150m.
26.01.24 – Gang violence is surging to unprecedented levels in Haiti, UN envoy says. An unprecedented surge in gang violence is plaguing Haiti, with the number of victims killed, injured and kidnapped more than doubling last year, the U.N. special envoy for the conflict-wracked Caribbean nations said Thursday. In a grim briefing, Maria Isabel Salvador told the U.N. Security Council, “I cannot overstress the severity of the situation in Haiti, where multiple protracted crises have reached a critical point.” She said the 8,400 victims of gang violence documented by her U.N. office last year — a 122% rise from 2022 — were mainly targeted by gangs in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
