Brazil breaks up international cocaine ring

Brazilian police fanned out across five states and the capital early today to smash an international drugs trafficking ring that allegedly shipped six tons of cocaine to Europe in the last year alone. More than 800 officers deployed to serve 127 arrest warrants and 190 search warrants in the operation centered on Latin America’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, police said in a statement. According to police, Sao Paulo served as the warehouse for cocaine from producing countries before the drug was sent by ship from the city’s port, Santos, to markets in Europe.

Arrests were also being made in Minas Gerais, Santa Catarina, Parana, Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District where the capital Brasilia is located. The investigation began in August 2016 after Brazilian law enforcement and the US Drug Enforcement Agency began looking into five drug seizures made over the previous year in Santos and at a shipment from Santos to a Russian port, police said.

That probe led to the uncovering of a criminal web in Brazil and Europe that used Sao Paulo as its main hub. In the course of the next 12 months, Brazilian police say they made 14 cocaine seizures and were able to tip off authorities in Belgium, Britain, Italy and Spain where shipments were being sent. In total, those seizures amounted to 5.9 tons of cocaine. Dutch police units recently intercepted and seized 3 containers that had 800 kilograms of cocaine in total from Suriname. It has not been ruled out that a big network in South America is behind the drug shipment. It is not clear if there is a link between the drug bust at the Dutch port and the Brazilian drug trafficking ring that was dismantled on Monday.

Since the beginning of this year there has been a huge increase in drug busts from Suriname. In July 473 kilograms of cocaine were intercepted in a container in the port of Rotterdam. In the same month 1.7 tons of cocaine were intercepted and seized at Suriname’s Jules Sedney Port in Paramaribo. In February the US Coast Guard at San Juan, Puerto Rico, confiscated 4.2 tons of cocaine from a fishing boat in international waters — the largest maritime seizure in the Atlantic since 1999. The US Coast Guard Cutter Joseph Napier first detected a 70-foot fishing boat, the Lady Michelle, on February 16 when it was patrolling with a ship from the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard.

The Lady Josephine was in international waters off the coast of Suriname when the Joseph Napier crew intercepted it. Drug traffickers reportedly opt to operate in the Caribbean instead of the Netherlands where special police agents are trying to catch them in the act. Last week 2 Surinamese brothers were caught trying to smuggle methamphetamine into Barbados.