9 January 2009
|
Home |
Search |
Contact |
Help
| |
 | |
INTERPOL underlines G8’s vital role in global effort against transnational crime in 21st Century
The three-day meeting, beginning 11 June, will see the Justice and Home affairs ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA meet with the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, and INTERPOL’s Secretary General to discuss efforts to counter transnational organized crime. Mr Noble will call for G8 countries to actively support national law enforcement forces in reaching out for the global tools developed by INTERPOL to combat organized crime, including its new Database on International Intellectual Property (DIIP) crime, databases on stolen and lost travel documents, DNA profiles, fingerprints, stolen vehicles and nominal information – all accessible via its I-24/7 secure global communications network – and its criminal analysis service. The meeting will hear how INTERPOL’s databases – many of which were developed in co-operation with G8 countries – facilitated and operationally helped police in several countries investigate and identify members of a criminal gang known as the Pink Panthers, a transnational crime group specializing in armed robberies on jewellery stores. The group is believed to include at least 200 individuals responsible for more than 90 robberies in 19 countries since 1999, with the value of stolen jewellery estimated at over 100 million Euros. Following the group’s alleged involvement in an armed robbery in a jewellery store in Tokyo in June 2007, Japanese police contacted INTERPOL for support, and working through data collated by INTERPOL on its crime databases, two individuals were identified. The case was notable in that it also saw for the first time in recent memory a country hand over to INTERPOL its entire case file on a crime.Two months previously, in April 2007, two individuals committed an armed robbery in Dubai and seized jewellery worth 11 million Euros. By consulting INTERPOL’s DNA database during the course of the investigation, police in the United Arab Emirates linked two of the DNA profiles to those of two individuals who were wanted by Liechtenstein for armed robberies. Thereafter, these two suspects were linked to the Pink Panthers and to similar robberies across Europe, where another individual was identified as having participated in an armed robbery in Monaco in June 2007, after police there consulted INTERPOL’s fingerprints database. "The discovery of these crime links only occurred because police in these countries recognized that in the 21st century one must consult global databases when investigating serious or violent crime, whether in the course of investigating non-nationals or when law enforcement is unable to solve a case at the national level," Secretary General Noble said ahead of the meeting. "The Pink Panthers case shows that organized crime, especially the type carried out by free-associating, mobile crime groups, is best fought today using global tools as provided by INTERPOL to its 186 member countries."
|
