Photo credit © Reuters
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek authorities have arrested a key member of an international gang that smuggled oil products from Latin America for sale illegally around the world and raked in profits estimated at more than $21 billion. dollars, police said Saturday.
The gang member, an Italian national for whom Interpol had issued an arrest warrant, was found on Friday in the southern suburbs of Athens, a police official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The warrant ordered his arrest and extradition to Venezuela to stand trial for crimes including the illegal transportation and trade of strategically important resources, the official said.
The gang was stealing petroleum products that were loaded onto tankers from Latin American ports and disabling tracking transponders to fool shipping brokers, police said in a statement.
Read also…
The criminal organization made a profit of more than $21 billion from smuggling, according to police.
(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and Yannis Souliotis; written by Bernadette Baum, French version Benjamin Mallet)
©2024 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.