Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, closed its borders on Monday to stop an outbreak of the coronavirus but experts told OCCRP that this may fuel organised crime.

European authorities arrested 13 suspected members of a Turkish drug trafficking group and seized 2.4 tonnes of heroin that was supposed to be shipped to Europe in food or construction materials containers, Europol announced on Monday.

The head of drug enforcement for the Philippine National Police told Reuters on Friday that the country’s draconian approach to curbing illicit drugs has been ineffective and that drug supply remains “rampant”.   

Spanish and Colombian authorities detained 12 drug trafficking suspects who allegedly used vehicles from their car dealerships, repair shops and caravan parks to move cocaine around and their businesses to launder money, Europol announced on Thursday.

Peruvian authorities detained 124 people suspected of being members of an organized crime group involved in prostitution and drug trafficking, theMinistry of Interior announced on Monday.

UK authorities have put a Chinese man behind bars for renting out hundreds of properties to gangs to be used in prostitution, drug trafficking and human smuggling.

When Cypriot police in July flagged a suspicious container bound for Sydney, Australian investigators intercepted the shipment and found a huge amount of ecstasy hidden inside aluminum barbeques. It took months of patience until they could make an arrest.

A rising number of organized crime groups are turning their attention to Europe’s lucrative drug trafficking market, Europol said on Wednesday. By now, one-third of the 5,000 gangs operating in the European Union is involved in the production, trafficking, distributing and selling of drugs.

Mexico’s former security minister has been arrested in the United States on charges of cocaine trafficking and accepting millions in bribes to help the Sinaloa cartel traffic drugs.

Two customs agents and a man were charged with drug trafficking in what authorities are describing as Australia’s largest-ever seizure of methamphetamine after investigators discovered the drugs hidden inside a shipment of stereo speakers.

Philippine police have seized hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine - with an estimated street value of US$49 million - hidden inside Chinese tea packets.

It’s an invention normally seen seen in South America, but British and Spanish police say they’ve intercepted a submarine carrying hundred of millions of dollars-worth of cocaine into Europe for the first time ever.

Over the past seven days, a string of anti-drug and organized crime busts by authorities across Ohio have led to dozens of indictments and huge loads of seized drugs and weapons, according to reports. 

Ten people have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling more than £15.5 million (US$20 million) out of the United Kingdom into Dubai, hidden in suitcases over the past three years, British authorities say.

Russian authorities seized more than 100 kilograms of narcotics, over 600 kilograms of chemicals that could be used to manufacture illegal drugs, along with a lot of other drug paraphernalia from drug traffickers, the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced Tuesday. 

Italian authorities seized a record amount of cocaine, worth an estimated €250 million (US$277 million), hidden among cases of bananas.

Four members of a family have turned over more than a dozen properties across the United Kingdom and Spain worth US$10.3 million after British authorities accused them of buying them with dirty money.

An Ohio drug trafficker has pleaded guilty to laundering more than US$19 million of narcotics profit on the dark web over the course of two years.

Swedish police said that a violent Nigerian sex and drug trafficking gang, which allegedly often uses black magic - voodoo - to coerce people into crime, has started spreading throughout the country, theSVT Nyheter reported last week.

Police found more than 40 skulls, 70 bones and a fetus in a jar during a raid on a suspected drug trafficking hideout in Mexico City on Saturday. The odd find came a few days after 31 cartel member suspects were arrested.