Cocaine Network Attacked

(Sao Paulo, Brazil) Approximately 200 Brazilian police, assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and German police, conducted raids in several locations to smash a organized cocaine trafficking ring.

ABC News Online:

Brazilian federal police broke up a drug-trafficking network run by Lebanese immigrants on Friday that had been shipping about 60 kg of cocaine every two weeks to the Middle East and Europe, authorities said.

Leaders of the network, most of them of Arab origin, were arrested in raids in Sao Paulo, western Mato Grosso state and southern Parana state, a police statement said.

"The cocaine came from Paraguay and Bolivia and entered Brazil through the Triple Frontier area. The main destination was Frankfurt, Lisbon and the Middle East," it said.

The investigation began after the arrest in June last year of three Americans in Istanbul, Turkey, when they got off a flight from Sao Paulo with about 25 kg of cocaine.

Seven more "mules" have since been arrested with drugs carried either in suitcases or concealed in their bodies.

The carriers were mostly Brazilian, Dutch, Canadian, Nigerian or South African and left through Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian airports.

Three crime families with 15 major figures are believed to head the smuggling network.

With Brazil's diverse ethnic mix of Arabs, Italians, Japanese, and Africans, circumstances exist for easy penetration by foreign criminal organizations. As an example, on Tuesday a 68-year-old Japanese man, Tadao Okayasu, was arrested at the Sao Paulo International Airport with a false-bottom suitcase carrying over six kilograms of cocaine. Okayasu had boarded a plane destined for Barcelona, Spain, with a stop in Amsterdam. There's more at the links.