The Covid-19 pandemic has not only brought hospital services to their knees and caused a worldwide wave of deaths. According to Europol, it also risks fostering for years organized crime in Europe, which has already reached “a breaking point”. In question: an unprecedented influx of cocaine, reveals the European police agency in a report made public Monday, April 12. Criminal networks will probably take advantage of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19 to infiltrate legal businesses that have become more vulnerable, concludes this report, written every four years.
Seeking to take advantage of efforts made across the world to overcome the health crisis, these organized gangs are also offering fake Covid vaccines or fake self-tests. “We have reached a breaking point,” said Europol director Catherine De Bolle in an interview with Agence France-Presse.
Main conclusion of the report: the impact on citizens’ lives, on the economy and the rule of law is too great. “A protracted pandemic will put great pressure on the European and global economy” and the expected recession “may shape serious and organized crime for the coming years”, specifies Europol in this document.
Cocaine: a level of purity never reached
The presentation of the report took place in Lisbon, as Portugal currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. “Criminals adapt very easily to the pandemic”, underlined the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, on this occasion. Europol is also concerned about an increase in corruption linked to drug trafficking, “unprecedented amounts of cocaine” being at the center of trafficking “to the EU from Latin America, generating profits of several billion euros ”for criminal networks in these two regions.
In addition, the purity of the cocaine thus transported is now at “the highest level ever reached in the EU”. The pandemic has also fostered cybercrime, as restrictions in force in many countries have forced their inhabitants to live and work more on the Internet. “Critical infrastructure will continue to be the target of cybercriminals for years to come. This represents a significant risk, ”notes Europol in its report.
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