The 9th meeting of theContainer Security Task Force organized by SELEC was held on 15th of November 2016 in Bucharest/Romania, with the participation of representatives from SELEC Member States and partners, such as French Republic, INTERPOL, Kingdom of Spain, Ukraine, UNODC and USA.
The Director for Operations of SELEC, Mr. Romulus Ungureanu, and the Task Force Coordinator, Mrs. Aggeliki Matsouka, made an overview of the past and future activities to be developed within the framework of the Task Force.
Container shipping is the most common way of bringing large quantities of commercial goods all over the world; however, containers may not be exclusively used for the transport of legal commodities. Organized criminal groups use containers for transporting different illicit commodities such as drugs and drug precursors, smuggled cigarettes, counterfeit goods, hazardous waste, dual use goods, a/o.
SELEC Member States’ experts discussed on the current situation in the Container Security field, namely the new trends, challenges encountered, investigations conducted and made proposals in this regard, overall aiming at strengthening regional cooperation and set the potential directions to be followed.
During the meeting, the questionnaire to be used as base for developing the 2015 – 2016 SEE Regional Assessment on Container Security was also presented.
“In the context of the dynamic interconnections built globally in the international trade, sophisticated concealment methods and various trafficking routes used by organized crime groups are posing serious difficulties to Law Enforcement authorities, being also a threat to the safety and security of the international supply chain”, stated Mr. Romulus Ungureanu, SELEC Director for Operations.
The Container Security Task Force, established in 2005 and coordinated by Hellenic Republic, has regularly annual meetings organized by SELEC.
