Europol - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Dark web drug market busted by European and US authorities

Reuters — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:11:07 +0000

BRUSSELS, June 16 (Reuters) – Police across Europe have dismantled a dark web drug marketplace known as ‘Archetyp Market’, the pan-European Europol police body said on Monday, which added that U.S. authorities had also assisted them in the operation.

Europol said police operations took place last week across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden to dismantle the dark web Archetyp Market.

It added that the platform’s infrastructure in the Netherlands was taken offline and that a 30-year-old German who was the administrator had been arrested in Barcelona.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/dark-web-drug-market-busted-by-european-us-authorities-2025-06-16/

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Encrypted phone service ‘Encrochat’ shutdown leads to 6,500 arrests, Europol says

Reuters — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 22:33:53 +0000

AMSTERDAM, June 27 (Reuters) – European policing agency Europol said on Tuesday that the takedown of Encrochat, an underground company that offered criminals supposedly secure encrypted communications, led to more than 6,500 arrests and 900 million euros ($980 million) in seized assets.

The system had an estimated 60,000 users when it shut down abruptly in June 2020, and Europol revealed the following month that law enforcement officials had been intercepting users’ communications for months.

In a statement on Tuesday, Europol offered its first overview of the results of the takedown, which it said had “sent shockwaves across organised crime groups in Europe and beyond”.

Police have analysed more than 115 million “criminal conversations”, Europol said, helping prevent “violent attacks, attempted murders, corruption and large scale drugs transports.”

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/encrypted-phone-service-encrochat-shutdown-leads-6500-arrests-europol-2023-06-27/

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Europol helps take down cocaine ‘super cartel’ in six-country bust

Aleksandar Brezar | Euronews — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:46:41 +0000

A drugs cartel believed to control up to a third of Europe’s cocaine trade was taken down in a six-country bust, with 30 tonnes of drugs seized, Europol said on Monday.

The European policing agency had helped co-ordinate the takedown, with police arresting a total of 49 suspects in raids in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Arab Emirates with help from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, over the space of 11 days in November.

At least six high-value targets of what Europol dubbed a “super cartel” were arrested in Dubai.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/11/28/europol-helps-take-down-cocaine-super-cartel-in-six-country-bust

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Open border with Ukraine is crime threat, France warns

Andrew Rettman - EU Observer — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 06:25:06 +0000

Foreign mobsters, illicit weapons, and drugs could enter the EU on the back of the Ukraine war posing a threat to law and order in the bloc.

“The heads of criminal organisations could take advantage of the situation to enter the Schengen area [an EU passport-free travel zone],” the French EU presidency warned in a memo last Thursday (31 March).

“The war is conducive to the circulation of weapons, some of which could enter the European Union to be used for criminal purposes,” the French threat assessment said.

The infiltrators could include “terrorists, who may use falsified identity documents,” it said.

“There is a risk that the flow of drugs to the EU will increase via Ukraine,” it added, noting that “Ukraine is a country with a high incidence of heroin use (the third most prevalent drug)” and “a transit country for heroin from Afghanistan and for heroin substitutes”.

“Belarus, which has in the past threatened to suspend measures to combat drug trafficking to the EU, and Russia are also transit countries for Afghan drugs (heroin, opium and even methamphetamine) and for the production of synthetic drugs,” the French memo also said.

The fears arose after 4 million people, mostly women and children, entered the EU from Ukraine in the past six weeks — an exodus of historic proportions which dwarfs the migration crisis of 2015, when 1 million people came, and which has left European authorities struggling to ID and register all those coming in.

Those most at risk of a related crime wave were Ukrainians, especially Ukrainian minors and war-orphans who were in danger of sexual exploitation or forced labour in Europe.

Europol, the joint EU police agency, sent eight officers to Slovakia, two to Poland, two to Moldova, and one to Romania in March to gather information on the criminal activity.

Frontex, the EU’s border control agency, has also sent 285 officers to the region to better control who is coming in.

EU police forces plan to do joint operations to catch crooks and to share information on the developments.

And the EU Commission is putting up €499m to help member states pay “for the protection and surveillance of external borders,” from its so-called Border Management and Visa Instrument, another French EU presidency memo, dated 25 March, said.

Meanwhile, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia have seen a spike in malicious attacks on digital infrastructure since the Russian invasion, France said.

But “it is not yet possible to establish a causal link between the war in Ukraine and these attacks,” France added.

The war was also likely to increase cigarette smuggling and trafficking in false documents, see the rise of new exfiltration networks for Ukrainian men refusing general mobilization, and increase demand for money-laundering, France said.

“Online fraud schemes (fraudulent e-mail and calls for donations),” were an associated problem, it said.

Source: https://euobserver.com/world/154642

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Gangs Exploit Refugee Crisis to Enslave People: Nobel Laureate Satyarthi

Kieran Guilbert — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 05:50:13 +0000

The refugee crisis has exacerbated human trafficking and modern slavery with global action needed to tackle the criminal gangs now selling people as well as firearms and drugs, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi said on Monday (05/03). (Reuters Photo/Kieran Guilbert)

New Delhi. The refugee crisis has exacerbated human trafficking and modern slavery with global action needed to tackle the criminal gangs now selling people as well as firearms and drugs, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi said on Monday (05/03).

Ahead of a summit of global leaders and Nobel laureates in Jordan this month on children’s rights, Satyarthi said organized gangs involved in other crimes had moved in to profit from slavery which is estimated to generate $150 billion a year.

“This refugee crisis has resulted in trafficking and slavery,” said Satyarthi, joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai for his work curbing child labor and fighting for their right to education.

“Human trafficking, small firearms and drugs are the three most organized crimes. Now they are intermingled,” he told a workshop on trafficking run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

He said there was growing recognition that slavery was a global issue with figures from the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) and rights group Walk Free Foundation estimating about 40 million people are living as slaves.

India is home to more slaves than any other nation – previous global estimates put the number at 18 million – with men, women and children trapped in forced labor and sex work.

Tens of thousands of children go missing each year in India with authorities now trying to set up a facial recognition system to match more than 100,000 children living in government or private shelters with reports of those who have disappeared.

Meanwhile, an estimated 10,000 lone migrant children have gone missing since arriving in Europe, Satyarthi said, citing figures from the European Union’s criminal intelligence agency Europol.

Satyarthi said he had heard reports of Syrian refugees agreeing to child marriages for their daughters to stop them from being sold into the sex trade or other forms of slavery.

He will meet with leaders from Jordan’s King Abdullah to Panama’s Juan Carlos Varela and various Nobel laureates and activists this month to address challenges facing children on the move, such as migrants, refugees and trafficking victims.

“Trafficking and slavery, and the denial of education combined with the refugee crisis, must be brought to the fore,” said Satyarthi, whose charity Bachpan Bachao Andolan says it has freed at least 80,000 child slaves in India over 30-odd years.

Satyarthi said India’s first anti-trafficking law, which may be passed this month after being approved by cabinet last week, was a major step forward with life sentences for traffickers and a rehabilitation fund to help victims rebuild their lives.

Yet Satyarthi warned that it was not the end of the fight in India.

“The caste system, gender discrimination, and the apathetic attitude of government officials and corruption are the biggest hurdles,” he said.

Reuters

Source: http://jakartaglobe.id/international/gangs-exploit-refugee-crisis-enslave-people-nobel-laureate-satyarthi/

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May pleads for ‘urgent’ post-Brexit EU security deal

Michelle Fitzpatrick and Joseph Schmid — Sun, 18 Feb 2018 05:15:43 +0000

British Prime Minister Theresa May called for a deal with the EU on post-Brexit security cooperation at the Munich Security Conference Photo: AFP

MUNICH, Germany

British Prime Minister Theresa May pleaded Saturday for an urgent deal with the European Union on post-Brexit security cooperation, warning that citizens’ lives were at stake.

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference, she acknowledged that no deal currently exists between the EU and a third country “that captures the full depth and breadth of our existing relationship”.

But she said there was no reason both sides could not come up with practical ways to create a “deep and special partnership” on security.

“We cannot delay discussions on this,” May said.

She also warned European partners not to put politics above cooperation against crime and terrorism.

“This cannot be a time when any of us allow competition between partners, rigid institutional restrictions or deep-seated ideology to inhibit our cooperation and jeopardise the security of our citizens,” May told the audience.

She cautioned that if there were no special deal on security by the time Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019, speedy extraditions under the European Arrest Warrant “would cease”.

And if the UK were no longer part of Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, information sharing would be hampered — undermining the fight against terrorism, organised crime and cyberattacks.

“This would damage us both and put all our citizens at greater risk,” May said, urging European leaders to show “some real creativity and ambition” in coming up with a bespoke UK-EU security pact.

“We must now move with urgency to put in place the treaty to protect all European citizens wherever they are in Europe,” May said.

Some experts have warned that cooperation on police and security matters could be limited by Britain’s refusal to fully accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) after Brexit.

May appeared to respond to those concerns by saying the UK would “respect the remit” of the ECJ when working with EU agencies, in return for “respect for our unique status as a third country”.

“But as a country outside the European Union, we will have our own sovereign legal order, so the European Court of Justice will no longer have jurisdiction in the United Kingdom.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, in his own speech at the top security gathering in Munich, said the bloc was “not at war” with the UK and warned against mixing up security with other Brexit issues.

“The security bridge between the UK and the EU will be maintained,” he said.

“But I don’t want throw security considerations in the same pot as trade policy issues.”

May last year irked many European peers when she suggested that Britain, the biggest military power in the bloc and a nuclear-armed NATO member, might hold back on security cooperation if it could not get a good trade deal once it quits the EU’s single market and customs union.

But there was no hint of that in Saturday’s address, the latest in a clutch of speeches by senior British officials as the government faces pressure to clarify its ambitions for Brexit.

There has been little progress in recent months in Britain’s negotiations with the EU on the nation’s future relationship with the bloc.

EU negotiator Michel Barnier warned last week that there were still “substantial disagreements” with Britain on a post-Brexit transition period to ease the pain of the split.

“Things would be so much easier if you stayed,” Munich Security Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger quipped after May’s speech, drawing applause.

May replied: “There’s no question of a second referendum or going back on that vote.”

Source: https://japantoday.com/category/world/may-pleads-for-‘urgent’-post-brexit-eu-security-deal-1

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