EU calls for united front against transnational crime

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s Di­rec­tor for the Amer­i­c­as, Pelayo Cas­tro, has called for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Eu­rope, T&T and the wider Caribbean to com­bat in­creas­ing­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works, warn­ing that or­gan­ised crime, drug traf­fick­ing and cor­rup­tion have be­come shared chal­lenges that no coun­try can tack­le alone.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Cas­tro high­light­ed the suc­cess of At­las Nexus, a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment op­er­a­tion that brought to­geth­er au­thor­i­ties from 35 coun­tries in an un­prece­dent­ed ef­fort to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions op­er­at­ing across con­ti­nents.

He said prepa­ra­tions for the op­er­a­tion took two years and in­volved more than 800 law en­force­ment of­fi­cials un­der the lead­er­ship of the Bel­gian Fed­er­al Po­lice, sup­port­ed by Eu­ro­pean se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.