Drug Trafficking

Brazil’s First Capital Command, or PCC, has expanded from a prison gang founded in Sao Paulo state in 1993 into what authorities describe as the largest criminal group in the Americas, with some 40,000 members and affiliates operating in nearly 30 countries.

Daniel Kinahan, the Irishman long alleged to be one of Europe’s leading organized-crime figures and drug traffickers, has been arrested in Dubai on an Irish warrant and is expected to be extradited to Ireland.

South American governments are deploying soldiers, drones, sniffer dogs, artificial intelligence, and expanded port surveillance to try to stem a record flow of cocaine, but the crackdown is having little impact as traffickers change up routes and tactics.

Indian companies shipped more than 320 million tapentadol pills to West Africa over the past three years, even though the synthetic opioid has not been approved by regulators in most countries in the region, according to a Bellingcat investigation.

Telegram is still hosting Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language black market that British officials have levied sanctions on and accused of facilitating crypto scams and human trafficking.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on six people and businesses it said were tied to a money laundering and cash-smuggling network operated by Cartel del Noreste, a Mexican drug trafficking group active near the U.S.-Mexico border.

A Mexican national pleaded guilty to participating in a two-year, multimillion-dollar black-market peso exchange conspiracy that laundered drug trafficking proceeds through Texas to Mexico, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday. 

Ten years after the Panama Papers exposed the offshore financial system exploited by tax cheats and criminals around the world, prosecutions and transparency reforms tied to the landmark investigation are still unfolding.

The Trump administration is weighing whether to designate Brazil’s two largest drug gangs as terrorist organizations, a step that could expand the U.S. sanctions toolkit to include financial restrictions on the groups and their associates.

Two Chinese pharmaceutical firms and six Chinese nationals are facing charges after prosecutors said they were part of a drug-trafficking network that provided material support to the Cártel del Golfo (CDG), a Mexican criminal syndicate that was designated as a foreign terrorist organization.