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Photograph: Robert Ghement/EPASome of the biggest fines in British maritime history were handed down to a group of Spanish fishermen on Thursday, for illegal fishing in UK waters.Two companies owned by the Vidal family were fined £1.62m in total in a Truro court, after a two-day hearing, in which details emerged of falsified log books, failing to register the transfer of fish between vessels, false readings given for weighing fish...
1 / 2To find one previously unknown work by one of art's undisputed geniuses may be considered good fortune. To discover 100 in one go might appear too good to be true. It should be no surprise then that last week's astonishing claims by Italian art sleuths to have found a cache of 96 paintings and sketches by the baroque giant Caravaggio in a workshop in Milan's Sforzesco Castle are facing increasing scrutiny and, in many circles, disbelief.Art...
Mexico’s army stumbled upon another secret tunnel for smuggling drugs into the United States, according to wire reports. This one is 755-feet long, dug 60 feet beneath the ground and runs across the Sonora-Arizona border. That pales in comparison with the 2,000-footers found in past years. But what it lacks in length it appears to make up for in sophistication: “It had electricity, ventilation and small cars to transport the drugs through the tunnel,” The Associated Press reported, citing a Mexican general. The find comes on the heels of the...
For centuries the Golden Triangle - where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet - has been notorious for the production of opium and drug smuggling.While the amount of poppies grown there has more than halved over the past decade, production of the stimulant methamphetamine has soared.Most of it is produced in Burma, and much of it ends up in Thaila...
The carousel fraudsters pretended to have sold more than 4m mobiles phones worth £1.7bn, most of which never existed.Fifteen people have been convicted of trying to steal £176m from the public purse in one of the largest and most complex mobile phone taxfrauds yet uncovered.The case, which has involved five separate trials and concludes on Tuesday with the sentencing of a Brussels freight company owner, came to light after investigators discovered...
Crime kingpin Mitchell is Moroccan link man in massive drug deals with Bolivian cocaine cartels AFRICAN KING: George ‘The Penguin’ Mitchell brings drugs in through AfricaGODFATHER George 'The Penguin' Mitchell has become the African link man in a cocaine chain from Bolivia to the streets of Ireland and Europe. The crime lord is sourcing massive shipments of cocaine, similar in quantity to the massive one seized by gardai this week, directly...
Next time if you get a missed call starting with +92; #90 or #09, don't show the courtesy of calling back because chances are it would lead to your SIM card being cloned. The telecom service providers are now issuing alerts to subscribers —particularly about the series mentioned above as the moment one press the call button after dialing the above number, someone at the other end will get your phone and SIM card cloned. According to reports, more than one lakh subscribers have fallen prey to this new telecom terror attack as the frequency of...
New motoring laws have come into force in France making it compulsory for drivers to carry breathalyser kits in their vehicles. As of July 1, motorists and motorcyclists will face an on-the-spot fine unless they travel with two single-use devices as part of a government drive to reduce the number of drink-drive related deaths. The new regulations, which excludes mopeds, will be fully enforced and include foreigner drivers from November 1 following a four-month grace period. Anyone failing to produce a breathalyser after that date will receive an...
The Foreign Office (FO) handled 6,015 arrest cases involving British nationals abroad between April 2011 and March 2012. This was 6% more than in the previous 12 months and included a 2% rise in drug arrests. The figures, which include holidaymakers and Britons resident overseas, showed the highest number of arrests and detentions was in Spain (1,909) followed by the USA (1,305). Spanish arrests rose 9% in 2011/12, while the United States was up 3%. The most arrests of Britons for drugs was in the US (147), followed by Spain (141). The highest...
The two men sentenced to death for selling Dh1,500 worth of marijuana to an undercover policeman were experienced dealers involved in smuggling larger quantities of drugs including opium and heroin, according to the head of Abu Dhabi Criminal Court. Related ■ UAE death sentence for Briton and Syrian to face significant checks ■ Briton and Syrian sentenced to death for drug dealing in Abu Dhabi Topic Crime The sentencing of Briton NL, 21, and MB, 19, from Syria, earlier this week caused controversy for the relatively small amount of drugs involved....
Three Dutch men have been jailed for up to seven years for smuggling over one tonne of cocaine on board a luxury yacht, the BBC reports. Klaas L, 61, and owner of the yacht, was jailed for seven years and his son Robert, 33, for five years by judges in Rotterdam. A third man, Mohamed Z, 45, was jailed for eight years. L's other son was acquitted, the BBC said. The drugs were found by Southampton police after a tip-off last year. The motor yacht Louise had been loaded onto a ship transporter bound for Holland while in the Caribbean, where it was...
Richard Wright Photo: HM Revenue & CustomsRichard Wright, 51, formerly of Chislehurst, Kent, was extradited from the Netherlands.He was sentenced today for conspiring to import Class A drugs via Zeebrugge in 2004.Wright had escaped before he could be charged but he continued his illegal activities and was arrested by HM Revenue and Customs officers after he served a jail term in Holland.Mike O’Grady, Revenue & Customs Assistant Director...
investigation has exposed the organised criminals who secretly trade organs for British transplant patients for as little as £4,500 (Rs 3.85 lakh). The gangs, operating in eastern Europe and the Indian subcontinent, prey on the desperation of patients requiring organs and the poverty of donors who often earn less than £1,000 (Rs 85,754) from the exploitative deals. The so-called organ brokers have developed a network of corrupt officials who provide fake documentation to show that donors are related to the recipients, a legal requirement...
Chicago man has been charged with trying to take possession of heroin concealed in a picture frame he had had shipped from Kenya to the downtown hotel where he worked, court documents show. Taiwo Obayemi, 34, of the 5100 block of South Blackstone Avenue in Chicago, was arrested Wednesday near his home after the picture frame had been shipped to his work place, the W Hotel, 644 N. Lake Shore Dr., according to a federal criminal complaint against him filed today. U.S. Homeland Security agents investigated six packages supposedly containing picture...
Customs officers in the Northern town of Lom found heroin instead of a first aid kit, the press office of the National Customs Agency announced for FOCUS News Agency. A mobile customs group stopped a car for a check. The vehicle was with Bulgarian registration and was travelling from Bulgaria to Austria, driven by a Bulgarian national. The car was redirected for a thorough check to the Vidin Ferryboat checkpoint, where authorities found a suspicious package put in the space, where the first aid kit was supposed to be. The drug test made on the...
Customs officers in the Northern town of Lom found heroin instead of a first aid kit, the press office of the National Customs Agency announced for FOCUS News Agency. A mobile customs group stopped a car for a check. The vehicle was with Bulgarian registration and was travelling from Bulgaria to Austria, driven by a Bulgarian national. The car was redirected for a thorough check to the Vidin Ferryboat checkpoint, where authorities found a suspicious package put in the space, where the first aid kit was supposed to be. The drug test made on the...
Haji Bagcho sent heroin to more than 20 countries and was once responsible for trafficking a fifth of the world's heroin supply, prosecutors estimate. In one year alone he is thought to have traded more than 125 tonnes of the drug worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and used the proceeds to give weapons, cash and supplies to Taliban commanders fighting Nato forces. His conviction was a rare success for an international effort which has struggled to dent the Afghan opium trade, or the international drug smuggling networks it feeds. Bagcho, aged...
RAWALPINDI: The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) arrested a Nigerian man on Sunday after recovery of 15 heroin-filled capsules from his stomach, the ANF said. Qgbnobioma Leonard, having passport number A-2540022, was proceeding to Dubai and onward to Nigeria by PIA flight PK-211 at 12 p.m. The ANF personnel found his activities suspicious. During investigation by the ANF officers, he confessed that he swallowed 15 capsules of heroin, the ANF said. He was sent to the hospital where 15 capsules filled with heroin were recover...
Bali police announced on Monday that they have arrested a total of five suspects they believe are part of an international drug smuggling syndicate. Police said they arrested Lindsay June Sandiford on May 19. Sandiford, a 56-year-old British lawyer, arrived from Bangkok, Thailand when she was detained at Ngurah Rai Airport with some $2.5 million worth of cocaine in her suitcase. The four additional suspects, who were arrested on Friday, were believed to be the recipients Sandiford’s shipment. “Cocaine could be sold for Rp 23.9...
Four tons of marijuana in large bales were found bobbing off the Southern California coast, and authorities are still trying to determine where it came from. Harbor patrol agents began receiving tips about "suspicious bales" 13 miles offshore near Dana Point, in Orange County around noon on May 20, according to a report from CBS Los Angeles. The Coast Guard, Orange County Sheriff's Department and U.S. Border Patrol hauled in some 160 bales or 7,623 pounds of marijuana. Border Patrol agents said the bales had a street value of $3.6 million. So far,...
Four tons of marijuana in large bales were found bobbing off the Southern California coast, and authorities are still trying to determine where it came from. Harbor patrol agents began receiving tips about "suspicious bales" 13 miles offshore near Dana Point, in Orange County around noon on May 20, according to a report from CBS Los Angeles. The Coast Guard, Orange County Sheriff's Department and U.S. Border Patrol hauled in some 160 bales or 7,623 pounds of marijuana. Border Patrol agents said the bales had a street value of $3.6 million. So far,...
Henry Yosodiningrat, chairman of the National Movement Against Drugs (Granat), says customs and excise officers are negligent when monitoring Tanjung Priok Port. The comments were made in regard to the smuggling of 351 kilograms of methamphetamine from China via Malaysia to Indonesia. “If methamphetamine can get out of the container port, then the supervision must be very low,” said Henry in Jakarta on Tuesday. Henry is concerned that the low supervision in ports could be taken advantage of by international drug networks to smuggle large quantities...
Edward Myatt attends his trial at a court in Denpasar, Bali accused of carrying 1.1 kg of hashish and 7 grams of methamphetamine (FILE Getty Images) Edward Myatt faced court for the first time on Wednesday since his arrest in February at Bali's Ngurah Rai Airport, where he was allegedly caught with 1.1kg of hashish and four grams of methamphetamines in plastic casings he'd swallowed.An Australian man accused of trying to import a large...
After a two-year manhunt, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency last week arrested Colombian drug kingpin Javier Antonio Calle Serna, a senior leader of Los Rastrojos, one of the country’s most formidable drug-trafficking organizations. After being indicted last summer by the Eastern District of New York, Serna reportedly felt so squeezed by the agency and rival drug dealers that he began negotiating for his surrender.His arrest...
The US treasury department has put two sons of Mexico's most wanted man Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on its drugs kingpin blacklist. The move bars all people in the US from doing business with Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar and Ovidio Guzman Lopez, and freezes any US assets they have. Joaquin Guzman, on the list since 2001, runs the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. Mexico has seen an explosion of violence in recent years as gangs fight for control of trafficking routes. The US administration "will aggressively target those individuals who facilitate...
Eduardo Ravelo, born on October 13, 1968 was added as the 493rd fugitive to the FBI 10 most wanted list on October 20, 2009. He is originally from Mexico, however he holds permanent residency status in the United States which gives him free movement across the border. An FBI informant and former lieutenant in the Barrio Azteca, a prison gang active in the U.S. and Mexico, testified that Ravelo told him to help find fellow gang members who had stolen from the cartel. In March 2008, he became the leader of the gang shortly after betraying his predecessor,...
A DRUG smuggling pensioner hid from the law for 15 years – even though he could be found in seconds on the internet. Fugitive John Henry Charles Price went on the run when he absconded from court in 1997. He was standing trial after being stopped at Dover with 10,000 Ecstasy pills worth £150,000. But rather than heading for the Costa Del Sol, or South America like Ronnie Biggs, the Englishman simply moved 200 miles to Powys, where he lived openly under his real name, paid taxes, insured cars and even voted. The elderly crook was finally nabbed...
Duane Eleby, a suspected drug courier, was all set to sneak 10 pounds of cocaine through a security checkpoint at Los Angeles International Airport last February with the help of a former Transportation Security Administration employee and a screener. Eleby, however, bungled the plan by going to the wrong terminal and was arrested after another TSA screener found the cocaine, which set in motion a series of undercover operations that led to Wednesday's announcement that two former and current TSA employees had been indicted on federal drug...
They say they want a temporary suspension while the crisis continues. Spain will being introducing border restrictions during the European Central Bank meeting in Barcelona at the start of May.Angela Merkel and Nicolás Sarkozy - The Interior Ministers of France and Germany have written a joint letter in which they call for the reform of, and ‘temporary suspension’ of the Schengen agreement which allows for the free movement between most member states of the EU. They say the change is necessary ‘to control the massive flow of immigrants’. The call...
Unlike the usual method of responding to 911 calls, cops use computers which show them 'red spots' where an incident is most likely to occur.They are then deployed onto the streets in a bid to deter thugs, burglers and gangsters from going on their next crime spree.Technical: LAPD cops study an enormous computer screen showing 'red spots' where the next crime is most likely to committed The 'predictive policing' system pulls together crime statistics...
jailed British terrorist has had his sentence cut by two years in a supergrass deal after giving evidence about an al Qaeda-linked “martyrdom” plot in New York, it was revealed today. Former teacher Saajid Badat was jailed for 13 years in 2005 for plotting with shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a transatlantic airliner in 2001 in what an Old Bailey judge said was a “wicked and inhuman” plot. He has now had his term reduced by two years under the first “supergrass” deal involving a terror convict, after providing intelligence to US prosecutors...
A SCOT has been accused of funding his multi-millionaire lifestyle from the proceeds of an international drugs empire.Ian Donaldson, 32, bought a fleet of Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis and Hummers with cash made from trafficking cocaine and speed from Spain to Scotland, it is claimed.Donaldson also owned luxury villas and powerboats and enjoyed a playboy lifestyle on the Costa del Sol and Tenerife.But last week the Spanish National Court in Madrid...
