With its 821 officially registered groups, its 25,000 members from 112 nationalities and its seemingly limitless capacity for action, the crime industry in Europe is flourishing. It threatens youth, society as a whole and even democracy, ministers, the executive director of Europol, two European commissioners and several Belgian police officials, of whom the country currently holds the presidency, hammered home on Friday April 5 in Brussels. turning point of the European Union.
Everyone intended to welcome a great first: the publication by the European Police Agency of a vast study on the criminal structures at work among the Twenty-Seven. The investigation was carried out with the collaboration of all capitals but also with that of a few third countries – not named. It takes stock of the activity of these groups, their organization, their modes of action, the way in which they sometimes cooperate – notably for money laundering – and the way in which they infiltrate all the workings of society with their favorite weapons: violence, intimidation and corruption.
The sixty pages of the report do not reveal, due to secrecy, the names of these organizations. However, we can easily spot traces of the Albanian and Italian mafias (the latter is also active in 45 countries), the Dutch-Belgian Mocro Maffia or various Eastern European structures which have gradually carved out a place of choice for themselves. in the very lucrative activities of synthetic drugs, online fraud, vehicle theft, cigarette smuggling, etc.
The names of individuals do not appear in the report either, but, according to the authors, the databases which have been set up at Europol headquarters in The Hague will be of great use to the police, justice and political leaders responsible for making operational decisions to fight organized crime. “We now have an unprecedented image of active and dangerous networks that threaten the internal security of the Unionsays Catherine De Bolle, the boss of Europol. We make the invisible visible and, against the networks, we now organize a network. »
Drug traffic
Of the 821 structures identified by his agency, almost half participate in the very profitable drug trafficking, more than a hundred of which deal exclusively with cocaine which flows in particular into the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg. Another hundred groups are involved in the illegal trade of “coke” and other narcotics as well.
You have 47.65% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.