Netherlands-Europol: Dangerous criminal network dismantled – 44 members arrested

An unprecedented international operation involving authorities from 11 countries has resulted in the arrest of 44 alleged members of a criminal network considered one of the most dangerous in the European Union, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, Europol, and the European Union agency for cooperation in the field of criminal justice, Eurojust.

“Several criminal organizations were working together to commit large-scale multi-criminal activities inside and outside the EU,” the European agencies, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said in a joint statement.

It is mainly about drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal enrichment among others, they clarified.

“The scale of drug trafficking attributed to the network is enormous, with reported activities on three continents,” Europol and Eurojust said.

Large quantities of various illegal drugs such as cocaine, hashish, cannabis and methamphetamine were seized during the searches.

During the operation coordinated by the two European agencies, which took place on Tuesday 22 November, a total of 94 investigations were carried out across Europe, targeting both the leaders of these criminal organizations and their associates.

This international sweep follows complex investigations by the General Prosecutor’s Office of Lithuania and the Forensic Service of the Lithuanian Police, together with their partners in the Czech Republic, Latvia, France, Poland, Norway, Slovakia, Hungary , Spain and the United States under the coordination of Eurojust and Europol.

Seven arrests were made in Lithuania, 9 in the Czech Republic, 9 in France, 7 in Slovakia, 5 in Latvia, 2 in Poland, 2 in Norway, 1 in Germany, 1 in Spain, 1 in the USA.

In France, nine people were arrested, including a Russian and a Lithuanian, each in their 50s, who lived on the Côte d’Azur in the south of the country. The two men are suspected of being responsible for making decisions about a very large cocaine and cannabis traffic to Russia, according to a judicial and police source.

They are the subject of an outstanding European arrest warrant, which will be handed over to the Lithuanian authorities, it added.

The other seven arrested, three men and four women, have been released without charge at this stage. They are suspected of money laundering and misappropriation of funds, according to the judicial source. According to a source familiar with the case, the environment of the Russian and the Lithuanian was said to have benefited from their generosity.

In France, luxury items worth more than 500,000 euros were seized as well as real estate, a well-informed source said.

– Across borders and between continents –

The network, which is also said to be linked to major drug-trafficking gangs outside the EU, operated in Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Slovakia.

“Extremely flexible, these criminals quickly adapted to new methods of drug trafficking to evade law enforcement,” according to the European organizations.

Loads of drugs were found on ships and trucks, well hidden in compartments.

“The criminal network was structured like a corporation, with various criminal groups and individuals – middlemen working together across borders to control the entire drug trafficking chain – from organizing huge drug shipments to distribution across the Europe and beyond,” Europol and Eurojust said. The cooperation between the countries and European organizations allowed a common strategy to be adopted to prepare the final phase of the investigations and “collapse the whole network”, they hailed in their statement.

RES-EMP

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