Smuggling

A Serbian court on July 13 sentenced a Balkan drug lord to 20 years in prison for smuggling 5.7 tons of cocaine from South America to Europe.

Police in Brussels have intercepted a drug trafficking channel through which ecstasy pills were imported from Bulgaria.

The drug trafficking channel was detected on a tip-off of a woman who had suffered systematic abuse by her husband for years on end, according to reports of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency based on local media outlets.

A total of 120 Syrian nationals hiding in a TIR truck were arrested upon entering Sofia in a police operation held early on Monday.

The refugees were taken to the 8th Regional Police Department in Sofia.

According to reports of the Bulgarian National Radio, police have intercepted a human smuggling scheme used to take refuges from the border to Sofia.

Syrians have begun to dominate human smuggling activities in the Aegean Sea that originate in Turkey, police have said amid frequent attempts by refugees set-ting sail across the sea in an effort to reach EU-member Greece.

Bulgaria's Deputy Interior Minister Tsvyatko Georgiev has drawn attention to an increase in the number of human smugglers in 2014.

Bulgarian Prime Minister put an equality sign between the terms corruption and smuggling.

''Corruption and smuggling are one and the same thing,'' said Borisov over a round-table entitled ''For Economy in the Light''.

Four smugglers of Georgian origin were captured while attempting to smuggle a total of 239 watches, which has been duct-taped to their bodies, at Turkey's northeastern border on June 22. 

The European Union will next week activate the first phase of a plan to disrupt the business of human traffickers in the Mediterranean and destroy the boats they have been using to ships tens of thousands of migrants toward the EU, officials said.

Seven people aged between 28 and 59 were arrested in coordinated raids across Attica on Thursday, in an operation launched by the Economic Police to crack down on an international network smuggling illegal tobacco products into the European Union through a base in Greece.

Police said they had launched a probe after Britain's Channel 4 News programme broadcast a report about hundreds of migrants from countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen being held for ransom by gangs in at least one Macedonian village, alleging that local police has been colluding with their captors.