BUCHAREST, July 14th – The SECI Center was represented last week at the 26th Annual International Drug Enforcement Conference, held in Istanbul, Turkey.
The SECI Center deputy director, Gabriel Sotirescu, presented “Sophisticated Concealment Methods of Drugs”, discovered by the law enforcement authorities in the SECI region.
“The imagination of traffickers has no limit when in comes to hiding the drugs, but fortunately the police and customs officers in the region are better and better trained. In the same time the law enforcement representatives form different agencies and different countries are working closer together, exchanging information on regular basis and analyzing in detail the drug trafficking phenomenon”, Gabriel Sotirescu, the SECI Center deputy director stated.
According to the analysis conducted in the member countries, the most common places for drug concealment were in transport – in natural cavities within vehicles or specially constructed: in fuel tank, inside spare tire, compressed air tanks, air filters, in the heating system, in the structure of containers, inside door panels, under or in the chassis, in bumpers, walls and ceiling of trailers, inside water tanks of trailers, behind and inside the seats, or in freight - drugs concealed inside or amongst legitimate goods: textiles and fabric, coffins, pizza boxes, heating radiators, tea bags, inside bedcovers, boxes with electric parts, products for personal hygiene, aluminum scrap, vegetables, stoves and stove pipes, truck tires or pieces of furniture.
The IDEC conference, organized by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Turkish National Police, brought together over 300 high-level officials representing 93 countries.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is one of the four U.S. institutions permanently represented at the SECI Center along with the FBI, the Department of Justice and US Secret Service.
The SECI Regional Center for Combating Trans-border Crime, headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, was launched in 2000, and is a unique operational organization in which police and customs liaison officers from 13 member states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey) work together in direct cooperation, coordinate joint investigations and facilitate information exchange.
Besides the member countries, there are 21 observers, countries and organizations: Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Canada, EUBAM, France, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Ukraine, UNDP Romania, the United Kingdom, UNMIK, and the United States of America.
Italy and the United States maintain permanent representation at the SECI Center, and Interpol and the World Customs Organization are permanent (non-resident) advisors to the SECI Center.
