Caricom Impacs calls for stronger cross-border crime cooperation

The seizure of near­ly 157 tonnes of il­lic­it drugs, more than 490 ar­rests and the dis­man­tling of dozens of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works dur­ing a nine-month in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tion have re­in­forced the need for coun­tries to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion in the fight against or­gan­ised crime, Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials say.

The suc­cess of Op­er­a­tion AT­LAS NEXUS, which in­volved 35 coun­tries, high­light­ed the grow­ing pres­ence of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works in the re­gion and the need for con­tin­ued uni­fied ac­tion against them.

The op­er­a­tion was joint­ly co­or­di­nat­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Plat­form Against Crim­i­nal Threats (EM­PACT), FRON­TEX and Cari­com Im­pacs, with sup­port from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s EL PAC­C­TO 2.0 pro­gramme. The ini­tia­tive con­clud­ed in Sep­tem­ber af­ter bring­ing to­geth­er se­cu­ri­ty, cus­toms and ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ties from Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.