The 23rd meeting of the Anti-Drug Trafficking Task Force was held at the SELEC Headquarters in Bucharest, on October 17th 2017, with the participation of SELEC Member States and Partner countries’ experts, as well as representatives of EUBAM and Interpol.
Mr. Romulus N. Ungureanu, Director for Operations of SELEC and Mr. Svetlin Danailov, Task Force Co-Manager, chaired the meeting and presented the latest activities developed in the framework of the Anti-Drug Trafficking Task Force, as well as the excellent results obtained in this field by the Member States’ law enforcement authorities, with SELEC support.
The Acting Director General of SELEC, Mrs. Snejana Maleeva, addressed opening remarks during which she underlined that SELEC’s mission is to support its Member States in preventing and countering this crime, as drug trafficking in Southeastern Europe remains a serious concern that law enforcement institutions are constantly dealing with.
During the meeting, the most noteworthy anti-drug trafficking joint investigations conducted by the Member States under SELEC’s coordination and support were presented by the representatives of the Member countries and partners.
The key findings of the 2016 Annual Drug Report for Southeast Europe were presented by Mr. Robert Patrancus, SELEC Criminal Analyst. This report presents the situation for each type of drug in relation to quantities, number of seizures, routes, concealments, transportation, offenders, price and, where relevant, provide a comparative analyze with the situation reported in the previous years.
It was concluded that working in partnership, exchanging information on routes, perpetrators, patterns and criminal profiles, organizing regional operations in a coordinated manner will adapt the actions and increase the efficiency of the Member States’ efforts, through a tailored approach to the particularities of the region and modifications of the criminal phenomena in a resource oriented approach.
As well, law enforcement authorities should focus on all segments offered by Internet, including on not-enough-considered dark web which shows no sign of slowing down. The anonymity provided by the dark web, as well as identity and location hiding techniques, creates difficulties for the investigators.
The Anti-Drug Trafficking Task Force was established in 2000, being coordinated by Republic of Bulgaria.