Europol

Romania's organised crime prosecution body, DIICOT, on Thursday announced the capture at the Black Sea port of Constanta of a shipment of 1.4 tons of heroin, which officials called the second-largest haul of the drug in EU territory in recent years.

Arrests have been made in Bulgaria, Israel and Spain in a cross-border bust of a large criminal network involved in investment fraud and money laundering, European police agency Europol said on May 12.

The fraud scheme, organised mainly by Israeli nationals, included call centres, was run from Bulgaria and the Republic of North Macedonia.

Sky ECC described itself as "a global leader in secure messaging technology", helping to keep a host of industries safe from identity theft and hacking. Law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe, however, say it was created with the sole purpose of facilitating drug trafficking and had become the messaging app of choice for transnational crime organisations.

Simultaneous police raids in France, Romania and Moldova have led to the arrest of 38 people allegedly involved in an international network that smuggled Moldovan citizens into France to exploit them in the construction industry, Europol said on Thursday.

Fourteen years later, in September 2020, the police came knocking, arresting 20 suspects in coordinated raids in 10 countries in Europe and the Middle East to dismantle the Albanian crime syndicate, 'Kompania Bello'.

The head of the EU's crime-fighting agency says perpetrators are spending more time online due to the various lockdowns across Europe. Catherine de Bolle called the development "an ongoing danger."

Cases of online child sex abuse are up this year owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the EU's crime agency said on Monday.

Cyprus will deport 17 migrants who are being held on suspicion of having links to extremist groups or involved in acts of terror, the country's interior ministry said Monday.

Checks at migrant crossing points at the border with Greece will be reduced or even scrapped by Turkish guards, according to Europol's annual report on undocumented migration. 

Individuals and criminal organizations have taken immediate advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to find new ways of making money, the European Union's law enforcement agency said Thursday, citing a spike in counterfeiting and cybercrime.

There has been a spike across Europe in cybercrime, including child pornography and financial scams, in tandem with the spread of Covid-19, according to a report by Europol, and Greece has also been impacted, albeit to a relatively far lesser degree than other countries.