Athens hosts international conference of world drug prosecutors

Since yesterday, the Greek capital has become a global centre for the exchange of information and analysis of drug cases, with 500 heads of drug prosecutors from around the world attending an international conference.

Among them are those who liquidated the world's largest drug cartels and arrested the largest drug traffickers. The goal conferences – to review recent developments in working methods and discuss ways to ensure greater information sharing and cooperation between all police forces worldwide.

The most relevant topics are new drugs, routes, and methods of infiltrating criminal groups. Conference participants will analyze the largest drug cases around the world and will have the opportunity to learn about how operations to catch drug dealers were carried out.

Also attending the conference is the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration since 2021, Anne Milgram, writes CNN Greece: Like no other agency in the world, this agency knows a lot about the activities, routes and especially about the people who are currently the most dangerous “Escobars”* in drug gangs.

Anne Milgram was New Jersey's attorney general and one of America's most vocal drug enforcement officials. In her testimony yesterday, she explained why what law enforcement agencies know about these dangerous substances today is nothing like what they knew in the past:

“As we stand here today, it’s important to understand that the world has changed. All the previous speakers have said this. The drug trade is not what it was when I started my career. We are dealing with a synthetic drug threat, and it is unlike any other threat we have ever seen. As you know, in the United States in 2022, 17,941 Americans will die from fentanyl and methamphetamine. These are synthetic drugs. We are tracking billions of dollars around the world in cryptocurrency. We are tracking, monitoring, and mapping the global supply chain that stretches across the world.”

*Escobar is a Colombian drug lord and terrorist. He is known as the “King of Cocaine” because he was the leader of the Medellin Cartel, which controlled 80% of the world's cocaine market by the end of 1980. To this day, he remains one of the most notorious, brutal, and wealthy criminals in history. By the mid-1980s, Pablo Escobar had amassed an incredible fortune, becoming the first criminal in history to make the Forbes 100 International Billionaires list. The Medellin Cartel he led smuggled 15 tons of cocaine into the United States every day, earning the organization more than $20 billion a year.

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