Crime groups from the Western Balkans are progressively exploiting West Africa to deepen their cocaine business to run the smuggling routes from Latin America to the European Union, said a report published Tuesday by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
The report states that networks of Albanians and Slavic speakers are among the main cocaine traffickers in Europe and have taken over the Balkans to a great extent.
The gangs have been setting up businesses in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde to benefit from the increased cocaine consumption in Europe, a higher number of controls on the direct routes from Latin America, and the enlargement of the sea ports in West Africa.
These groups have not only gone that far, but have also established connections with Dutch criminals as well as the Primeiro Comando da Capital of Brazil to fortify their control over the chain of supply.
Sasa Djordevic, co-author and senior analyst at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, explained that the connection between the Western Balkan groups and the Brazilian gang is the main, leading one when it comes to smuggling cocaine into Europe.
A significant part of the report, funded by the UK government, was the call for a combined effort of law enforcement agencies and port authorities on both continents to tackle the drug trafficking routes that were expanding.
According to Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo, director of the Observatory of Illicit Economies in West Africa, these groups are the most technologically advanced among the others.
The report issued a warning that the scale of the operation could only be counteracted through better data gathering and the direct targeting of those brokers involved in the trade.
