All news on the topic: Smuggling

Lithuania’s two border crossings with Belarus, at Medininkai and Šalčininkai, were both closed for several hours as a result of the balloon incidents.

Three Syrian freighters have been accused of transporting grain stolen from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

London police said they have dismantled a criminal gang suspected of smuggling 40,000 stolen mobile phones to China in their largest operation against phone theft to date, resulting in 46 arrests over the last two weeks.

The name Sawhney Arun has repeatedly surfaced in investigations into dubious schemes involving Ukrainian, Russian, and Indian companies. In investigative publications, the name Sawhney Arun does not sound as loud as the names of oligarchs or politicians, but where it appears, the tone of the publications immediately becomes sharp and alarming.

Europol-supported operations in Spain and Portugal have seized more than 4 tonnes of cocaine and led to over 60 arrests between November 2024 and September 2025.

The operation spanned 18 countries across Asia and North Africa, with authorities reportedly seizing fentanyl in quantities “enough to kill 151 million people.”

The alleged head of a large cocaine-smuggling operation, who was one of Europe’s most wanted men at the time of his arrest, has gone on trial in Brussels.

An HGV driver attempted to smuggle £2.9m worth of cocaine in a truck carrying a shipment of Lego.

A drug-smuggling gang was apprehended after postal workers thwarted a scheme to import cannabis into the UK disguised as candles.

The name of Alibek Narbekov, with the nickname Aliba, has been mentioned more frequently in recent years in behind-the-scenes conversations and criminal reports.

Meat and dairy products are being smuggled into the United Kingdom in “alarming amounts,” raising the risk of a major disease outbreak, a parliamentary committee warned Monday.

Bella Cully, 19, faces life behind bars or 20 years in prison after being arrested earlier this year for allegedly taking cannabis into Georgia.

The pregnant British teenager Bella Culley has reportedly been informed she will be released from the Georgian prison where she is being held on drug-smuggling charges if she pays a substantial fine.

Russia has stopped fighting money laundering; corresponding large criminal cases are not being initiated, and one-time operations on crypto exchanges are solely related to the redistribution of spheres of influence and do not escalate into large-scale investigations.

A British teenager who was caught at Heathrow Airport with a large stash of cannabis smuggled into Britain from Thailand has been jailed.

Two individuals from Ukraine have appeared in court, accused of smuggling migrants into the UK on a yacht.

A prison officer who intended to exploit her position to smuggle items such as mobile phones and illegal drugs into the jail has been imprisoned.

A Chinese national has been sentenced to eight years in prison for smuggling firearms and other military items to North Korea, the US Justice Department has stated.

Jordanian customs officials have seized 517,000 Captagon pills smuggled from an undisclosed neighboring country, state news agency Petra reported Wednesday.

A BBC investigation has exposed the French and UK operations of a powerful and violent smuggling gang taking people across the English Channel in small boats.

A UK crackdown targets Balkan gangsters who used fraudulent Bosnian documents—only weeks after Bosnian journalists exposed the extent of the identity theft scheme.

A British mother-of-two has been arrested in Mauritius after she was accused of trying to smuggle cannabis inside her six-year-old son’s suitcase.

The first wave of sanctions aimed at key figures in people-smuggling gangs have come into force in a bid to hit those involved in assisting illegal immigration to the UK.

Fuel smuggling from Libya is a business with billion-dollar turnovers, but very little is known about the extent of the maritime operation that regularly exports petroleum products from the country.

A Thai police chief has disputed Bella May Culley’s defence that she was tortured into smuggling drugs as he presented CCTV of her ‘calmly’ walking through passport control by herself.