The two organizations of police and judicial cooperation of the European Union track organized crime in all its forms. Thanks to discrete methods, investigators record encouraging results despite multiple challenges.
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The building, gray and functional, could house any office company. Placed in a business district of The Hague (Netherlands), far from the typical alleys of the city center, the Europol HQ is a armored hive, full of surveillance cameras. On the menu of briefings punctuating the days of the European police organization, sensitive affairs.
Behind the closed doors develops the fight against crime – the one that goes beyond borders. More than a thousand people, including around fifty French people, are working today in this organization created in 1999, willingly opaque and cultivating the secret to its -investigation techniques. Under the supervision of Catherine de Bolle, from the Belgian police, some 150 analysts take the pulse of criminal organizations.
The police cooperation agency of the European Union (EU) is called in support of investigations as soon as two states work on a joint survey. The data is stored, crossed and then used by analysts responsible for the operational part. According to the Guardian, the volume of information held by Europol represents “at least 4 petacts, the equivalent of 3 million CEDEROMS or a fifth of the entire content of the Library of the US Congress”. A gigantic resource that recently had the European data protection controller, which has enjoined the agency to delete the data received from member states over the people six months after reception, if no link with a criminal organization had not been established.
Once the data has been analyzed, it is during the Days Action, the “J Days” when the national police are planning on their targets, that the ants of the investigators leaves the shadows. This was the case, for example, in October 2021, during an operation called “Darkhuntor” which led to the arrest of 150 people in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, suspected of engaging in drug trade on Dark Net. Several million euros in cash and Bitcoins, as well as drugs and weapons, had been seized. The 27 Europol member states have liaison agents, whether police, gendarmes, or customs officers. Among non -European members, but decisive for international surveys, are around thirty American representatives (from the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA], FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [ATF] …), but also A Colombian liaison office with two police officers. Officially, it is the police of the member states that carry out the arrests. Europol appears in support, as a form of discreet co -production.
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