Félix ‘the Cat’ Bingui due to appear in Marseille court on multiple charges including money laundering
One of France’s most wanted suspected drug traffickers was due in court in Marseille after his extradition from Morocco.
Félix Bingui, known as “the Cat” and reportedly head of the notorious Yoda clan, was arrested in Casablanca last March.
Continue reading...Protests have erupted nationwide after disappearance of boys not seen since they were approached by soldiers
The disappearance of four boys in Ecuador after they came into contact with the armed forces is posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.
The four – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game near their homes on 8 December when 16 air force soldiers approached them.
Continue reading...Victims of Medellín cartel demand justice as some express dismay former mob boss faces no charges in Colombia
The return of the former drug trafficker Fabio Ochoa to Colombia following his deportation from the United States has reopened old wounds among victims of the Medellín cartel, with some expressing dismay at the Colombian authorities’ decision to let Ochoa walk free.
Some of the cartel victims said they were hoping the former drug lord will at least cooperate with ongoing efforts by human rights groups to investigate one of the most violent periods of Colombia’s history and demanded that Colombian prosecutors also take Ochoa in for questioning.
Continue reading...Soldiers and marines discover drugs in Sinaloa, while separately authorities arrest more than 5,200 migrants
Mexican security forces have impounded more than a ton of fentanyl pills in what officials have called the biggest seizure of the synthetic opioid in the country’s history.
Soldiers and marines found the fentanyl at two properties in the northern state of Sinaloa, late on Tuesday – exactly a week after Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico unless the two neighbouring countries cracked down on the flow of immigrants and drugs across their borders with the US.
Continue reading...Tech-savvy organised crime groups profiting from billion-dollar enterprise that is spreading beyond Russian borders
At any one moment in towns and cities across Russia, thousands of drug packages lie buried in the ground, attached by magnets to lamp-posts or taped underneath window sills, waiting to be picked up by their intended customers.
From the streets of Moscow to remote towns in Siberia, hand-to-hand buying of illegal drugs – as is the norm in most of the world – is on the wane. Instead, retail-size bags of drugs are secreted using spycraft by an army of young kladmen (stash men) who upload dead-drop locations, which are unlocked when customers make an online purchase.
Continue reading...Ex-president says he kept criminals to kill other criminals while mayor and offers no apologies at hearing investigating crackdowns
The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has told a senate inquiry into drug killings under his leadership that he kept a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor.
The 79-year-old, making his first public appearance on Monday since his term ended in 2022, said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his presidency, during which as many as 30,000 people were killed in a “war on drugs”.
Continue reading...Six boats among impounded assets worth at least $100m off country’s south-west coast, navy says, after arresting 23 people
Mexico’s navy has said it arrested 23 people in its largest-ever drugs bust, seizing over eight tonnes of illicit cargo in an operation off the country’s south-western Pacific coast.
“Navy personnel seized 8,361 kilograms of illicit cargo, which represents the largest amount of drugs seized in a maritime operation, unprecedented in history,” a statement from the ministry of the navy said on Friday.
Continue reading...Mexico argues negligence from makers such as Colt and Glock has led to gun trafficking to drug cartels and criminals
The US supreme court said on Friday it will decide whether to block a $10bn lawsuit Mexico filed against US gun manufacturers and distributors that argues that their negligent and illegal commercial practices have unleashed bloodshed in the country.
The lawsuit, filed in Boston in August, names Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Beretta, Colt and Glock, as well as Boston-area wholesaler Interstate Arms.
Continue reading...Police seek to identify intended recipient after drugs found under pallets at four Grand Frais stores
Dozens of kilograms of cocaine have been found in banana deliveries to four of a French supermarket chain’s stores, with police unsure who the intended recipient was.
Staff at Grand Frais branches in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France were astonished to find between 40kg (88lb) and 50kg of drugs hidden under pallets of bananas and were anxious to reassure customers that the cocaine had not come into contact with the fruit.
Continue reading...Imitation fruits and vegetables are the latest ‘sophisticated’ tactic for Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs into the US
Everyday fruit and vegetables are some of the latest methods Mexican cartels are using to smuggle drugs into the US, recent seizures of methamphetamine suggest.
Around 2 tonnes of the powerful stimulant known colloquially as crystal meth was discovered recently in packages designed to look like bright green watermelons at the San Diego, California, port of Otay Mesa, according to US Customs and Border Patrol Protection officials.
Continue reading...Vendors selling to tourists criticize proposal, but those wanting to shed the country’s mafia boss image praise it
Souvenirs depicting the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar could be banned in Colombia if legislators approve a bill introduced this week in the nation’s congress. The proposal is criticized by vendors who sell his merchandise to tourists from around the world, but backed by those who believe the country should shed its image of mafia bosses.
The bill proposes fines of up to $170 for vendors who sell merchandise that depicts Escobar and other convicted criminals, and would also enable police to fine those who wear T-shirts, hats and other garments that “exalt” the infamous drug lord.
Continue reading...Officials have mixed accounts around arrest of Sinaloa co-founder El Mayo after Guzmán López turned himself in
Joaquín Guzmán López, the son of Sinaloa cartel co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in federal court in Chicago, days after his arrest in a dramatic operation in which he may have delivered his father’s former business partner to US authorities.
Guzmán López, 38, was detained on Thursday alongside Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, the other co-founder of one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups, after touching down in a small plane in El Paso, Texas.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador makes unusual public appeal after arrest of top leaders of Sinaloa cartel
Mexico’s president has taken the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other following last week’s detention of the top Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his daily press briefing that he trusted that drug traffickers knew they would only suffer if they stepped up the internal wars that already plague the Sinaloa cartel.
Continue reading...Mayor of Norwegian capital, Anne Lindboe, says drugs worth up to £570m have entered through the port
The mayor of Oslo has warned that drug smugglers are increasingly targeting the Norwegian capital as a gateway to Europe as authorities tighten controls on major ports such as Antwerp.
Oslo’s mayor, Anne Lindboe, said drugs worth up to £570m have been smuggled through Norway’s largest port, which receives 50-70 ships and 243,000 containers every week.
Continue reading...US announces arrest of two leaders of organised crime group as Mexican authorities say they were in the dark
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has called for “transparency” after the sudden and secretive arrests by US authorities of two top leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful organised crime groups.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, 76, founded the Sinaloa cartel with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and has been a top target of US law enforcement for decades, with a $15m bounty on his head.
Continue reading...Biden praises law enforcement for fentanyl charges against members of ‘one of the deadliest enterprises in the world’
The US justice department has arrested two leaders of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, including the cartel’s co-founder, for leading deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the charges against cartel leaders Ismael Zambada García, known as “El Mayo”, one of the group’s co-founders, and Joaquin Guzmán. Both men face several charges in the United States for allegedly leading the cartel’s criminal operations.
Continue reading...Bible-bashing drug boss accused of targeting Afro-Brazilian religions and Catholic congregations
Reports that a powerful Rio drug lord known for his extremist religious beliefs ordered Catholic churches near his stronghold to close have spooked worshipers and security experts and exposed the advent of a “narco-pentecostal” movement made up of heavily armed evangelical drug traffickers.
Claims emerged in the Brazilian press over the weekend that Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa – a notorious gang boss known as Peixão (Big Fish) – had determined that three places of worship should shut down in and around the agglomeration of favelas that he controls in northern Rio.
Continue reading...Juan Orlando Hernández said all Honduran political parties accepted drug money, but denied taking bribes himself
Juan Orlando Hernández, the disgraced former president of Honduras, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for enabling drug traffickers to use his military and national police force to help ship tons of cocaine into the United States.
US federal judge P Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years in a US prison and fined him $8m. A jury convicted him in March in a Manhattan federal court after a two-week trial, which was closely followed in his home country.
Continue reading...Justice department charges 24 defendants and says long investigation reveals links between Mexico’s Sinaloa gang and China
The US justice department has accused Chinese “underground bankers” of helping Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel launder more than $50m in drug-trafficking proceeds.
An indictment unsealed in California charged 24 defendants with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine and money-laundering offenses.
Continue reading...Eight tonnes of cocaine seized and 40 people arrested after four-year investigation led by Spain’s Guardia Civil
• How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?
Forty people have been arrested and eight tonnes of cocaine have been seized as a result of a four-year international police operation targeting a criminal network that trafficked large quantities of the drug from South America to Europe via west Africa and the Canary Islands.
The long-running investigation – which was led by Spain’s Guardia Civil force and coordinated by Europol’s operational taskforce – discovered that a Balkan cartel was using logistical hubs in west Africa and the Canaries to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador into EU countries.
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