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Five organised crime groups "dismantled or disrupted" in 2017

Five organised crime groups

Friday 21 September 2018

Five organised crime groups "dismantled or disrupted" in 2017

Friday 21 September 2018


Bailiwick Law Enforcement said officers tackled, dismantled or disrupted five serious or organised crime groups in 2017, as has been revealed in their annual report

The groups were engaged in drug trafficking, money laundering and illegal immigration.

Both the Guernsey Border Agency and Police hit these syndicates through "early intervention" and "gearing resource to risk using our wide range of assets" - one of the examples of this it gave was using the cash detector dog to identify a large amount of money being exported, which was suspected to be proceeds of crime.

Head of Bailiwick Law Enforcement, Chief Officer Patrick Rice, said they could not give anymore detail, but these syndicates were a number of different groups looking to commit crime in the Bailiwick.

"Through various investigations and using different tactics we were able to disrupt them," he said.

"It is our role to protect the Bailiwick from organised crime, and in 2017, operations led us to seize cash and also make arrests of people for the possession of controlled drugs."

Post office

Pictured: Guernsey Post handles the mail but the GBA will search it when necessary.

Chief Officer Rice said much of the work that went in to tackling these groups was through intelligence sharing with other jurisdictions. One key decision that needed to made was whether to disrupt the operation immediately, or let it play out and then make arrests. 

Part of the process of identifying these syndicates is achieved through the "hard work of the GBA officers", when searching through the four to six tonnes of airmail that arrives in the island each day.

Customs Officers attend the Post Office daily to look for prohibited and restricted goods and to utilise certain tools to help them, such as x-ray machines and detector dogs. When suspicious mail is identified it is further examined to establish if it contains any prohibited or restricted goods.

In January 2017 a "commercial quantity" of MDMA was identified in the post and following these searches. A local man was arrested and charged after visits to the local address, as well as an associate who was attempting to collect the postal package from the Post Office. Following further investigations the man was also charged with previous importations of Cannabis Resin and a smaller amount of MDMA. He was sentenced to seven years and four months imprisonment.


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