Smuggling trafficking

The Board is pleased to note that, during 2004, two additional countries, Serbia and Montenegro and Turkmenistan, joined the operation. Their participation is considered very important. In the case of Serbia and Montenegro, traffickers have targeted that country for the diversion of acetic anhydride from licit trade to be subsequently smuggled into areas where illicit heroin... 

The illicit trade of opium is maintained today by a vast network of producers and traffickers who employ seemingly endless tactics to smuggle the product into nations around the world. 

MDMA tablets are often smuggled into the country by couriers who are paid by drug traffickers to smuggle and deliver the tablets (Figure 6.3). These couriers use commercial flights. 

The Caribbean, notably Jamaica24, also continues to play an important role for cocaine shipments to the UK. Although the largest quantities are trafficked via Spain and the Netherlands into the UK, small but rapidly rising quantities arrive via countries in West Africa. A significant number of the traffickers involved in the smuggling of cocaine from the Caribbean into the UK are British-born West Indians.25... 

In 2005, cocaine seizures reported by African countries amounted to 2.5 mt 52 per cent of these seizures were in West and Central Africa, 33 per cent in North Africa and 14 per cent in southern Africa. In 2005, African cocaine seizures were higher than in 2003 or 2002, but lower than in 2004. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that cocaine trafficking via Africa is on the rise. UNODC s database for individual seizures shows that 9 per cent of all cocaine seizure cases made in Europe in 2005, where the origin was established, were smuggled via Africa in 2006, this proportion rose to 12 per cent. 

In April 2007, one such ecstasy trafficking ring, organized by an Israeli group, was dismantled in Australia (see ABC, AFP says 37m ecstasy haul will reduce supply , April 23, 2007 Jerusalem Post, Israeli suspected in Ecstasy smuggling , April 23, 2007). 

Indeed, such an analysis need not be limited to drugs. Similar databases can be developed for trafficked persons, or firearms, or any other smuggled commodity to produce a standardised and quantified barometer of transnational criminal activity as a supplement to existing intelligence-based assessments. Issues for which there are currently no accurate global figures, such as human trafficking, are difficult to discuss without this basic data. 

Because Rohypnol is not manufactured or approved for medical use in the United States, illegal distributors must obtain their supplies from other countries. Colombian traffickers have shipped Rohypnol to the United States via mail services and couriers using commercial airlines. Distributors have also traveled to Mexico to obtain supplies of the drug and then smuggled it into the United States. 

---