Police forces from several countries have dismantled an international drug trafficking ring that used what authorities called high-speed “narco boats” to smuggle large quantities of cocaine from Brazil and Colombia to Spain’s Canary Islands, Spanish police said Friday.
The ring is suspected of using 11 speedboats to pick up drugs from larger “mother ships” in different points in the Atlantic and then bring them to the archipelago located off northwestern Africa, police said in a statement. They also allegedly used an abandoned shipwreck as a refueling platform for the speedboats, authorities said.
It is believed to be “one of the largest criminal organizations dedicated to cocaine trafficking operating from South America to the Canary Islands” using this method, the statement added.
Officers arrested 48 people as part of the operation, which was carried out in cooperation with Britain’s National Crime Agency, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and pan-European police agency Europol.
The authorities have so far this year seized nearly 3,800 kilos of cocaine that was being smuggled by the gang, along with 19 boats and around 100,000 euros ($114,000) which belonged to the ring. Six properties and electronic and geolocation equipment were also seized, authorities said.
Police forces from Colombia, France, Portugal, Poland and Cape Verde also took part in the operation.
Spain is a major gateway to Europe for drug trafficking networks due to its ties to former colonies in Latin America and its proximity to Morocco, a top cannabis producer.
The bust was announced one day after the U.S. Treasury announced it had sanctioned six accused drug traffickers allegedly using boats and “narco subs” to traffic cocaine. Four Guyanese nationals and two Colombians — Yeison Andres Sanchez Vallejo and Manuel Salazar — were accused of allegedly trafficking tons of cocaine from South America to the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.
Six accused drug traffickers allegedly using boats and “narco subs” to traffic cocaine were hit with U.S. sanctions, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Thursday.
Four Guyanese nationals — Paul Daby Jr., Randolph Duncan, Mark Cromwell, Himnauth Sawh — and two Colombians — Yeison Andres Sanchez Vallejo and Manuel Salazar Gutierrez — were sanctioned for allegedly trafficking tons of cocaine from South America to the United States, Europe and the Caribbean, officials said.
Daby Jr. and Duncan operate the largest drug trafficking operation in Guayana, according to U.S. officials, using “narco subs” — a semi-submersible vessel that can’t fully go underwater — airstrips and various individuals in their smuggling efforts. Daby Jr. also transports illegal gold from Guyana, while Duncan traffics cocaine from Guyana to Africa and the Caribbean to Europe and the United States, the Treasury said.
The Treasury Department said Cromwell, a former Guyana police officer, is wanted for his alleged role in the abduction of another Guyana police officer in 2024. Sawh, a Guyana police officer, is accused of facilitating safe passage for Mexican and Venezuelan drug traffickers sending cocaine through Guyana. Colombians Sanchez and Salazar are accused of overseeing airstrips used by aircraft smuggling cocaine from Colombia to Guyana, the Treasury said.
Authorities in Guyana intercepted a semi-submersible vessel, or “narco sub,” in 2024 used for trafficking drugs across South America and internationally.
INTERPOL
“As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the designated or blocked persons described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC,” the Treasure Department said.
Guyana has become a major hotspot for running cocaine through the South American country to the United States and Europe. U.S. Treasury officials in their statement said a combination of Guyana’s proximity to the Caribbean and alleged corruption at its ports and along its borders help aircraft and “narco subs” move through the country’s waters without being detected.
Despite crackdown attempts, authorities have discovered record amounts of cocaine in homemade “narco subs” transversing through rivers threading the country’s jungles. In March 2025, a cargo vessel originating in Guyana was discovered by police in the waters off Trinidad and Tobago with approximately 182 kilograms of cocaine, U.S. officials said.
Last year, authorities found more than 8,000 pounds of cocaine in a lush jungle near the border with Venezuela. “Narco subs” can transport as much as 3 tons of cocaine at a time. Interpol, the intergovernmental organization that facilitates international policing, warned that traffickers in the region can steer semi-submersibles through the rivers of South America before crossing the Atlantic Ocean and eventually arriving in Western Europe.
Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at cara.tabachnick@cbsinteractive.com
Three British nationals accused of smuggling over two pounds of cocaine into Indonesia were charged Tuesday in a court on the tourist island of Bali. They face the death penalty under the country’s strict drug laws.
Convicted drug smugglers in Indonesia are sometimes executed by firing squad.
Jonathan Christopher Collyer, 28, and Lisa Ellen Stocker, 29, were arrested on Feb. 1 after customs officers halted them at the X-ray machine after finding suspicious items in their luggage disguised as food packages, said prosecutor I Made Dipa Umbara.
Umbara told the District Court in Denpasar that a lab test result confirmed that ten sachets of Angel Delight powdered dessert mix in Collyer’s luggage combined with seven similar sachets in his partner’s suitcase contained 2.19 pounds of cocaine, worth an estimated $368,000.
British nationals, from left, Phineas Float, Jonathan Collyer, and Lisa Stocker who are accused of smuggling nearly a kilogram (over two pounds) of cocaine into Indonesia are escorted by security officers before the start of their trial hearing at Denpasar District Court in Denpasar, Bali, on Tuesday, June 3, 2025.
Firdia Lisnawati / AP
Two days later, authorities arrested Phineas Ambrose Float, 31 after a controlled delivery set up by police in which the other two suspects handed the drug to him in the parking area of a hotel in Denpasar. He is being tried separately.
The drugs were brought from England to Indonesia with a transit in the Doha international airport in Qatar, Umbara said.
The group successfully smuggled cocaine into Bali on two previous occasions before being caught on their third attempt, said Ponco Indriyo, the Deputy Director of the Bali Police Narcotics Unit during a news conference in Denpasar on Feb. 7.
After the charges against the group of three were read, the panel of three judges adjourned the trial until June 10, when the court will hear witness testimony.
Both the defendants and their lawyers declined to comment to media after the trial. Speaking to the BBC in February, their lawyer, Sheiny Pangkahila, said if convicted, they could each face between 15-20 years in an Indonesian prison or the death penalty.
The British embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
About 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data showed. Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
A British woman, Lindsay Sandiford, now 69, has been on death row in Indonesia for more than a decade. She was arrested in 2012 when 8.4 pounds of cocaine was discovered stuffed inside the lining of her luggage at Bali’s airport. Indonesia’s highest court upheld the death sentence for Sandiford in 2013.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has moved in recent months to repatriate several high-profile inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, back to their home countries.
Frenchman Serge Atlaoui returned to France in February after Jakarta and Paris agreed a deal to repatriate him on “humanitarian grounds” because he was ill.
In December, Indonesia took Mary Jane Veloso off death row and returned her to the Philippines.
It also sent the five remaining members of the “Bali Nine” drug ring, who were serving heavy prison sentences, back to Australia.
According to Indonesia’s Ministry of Immigration and Corrections, 96 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges, before Veloso’s release.
Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, a British former flight attendant, Charlotte May Lee, was arrested on charges that she had more than 100 pounds of synthetic cannabis in her suitcases. She could face life in prison if convicted.
Sri Lanka’s customs authorities arrested on Friday a woman and seized the largest haul of cocaine ever detected at the country’s main international airport, an official said.
The unnamed 38-year-old Thai woman was carrying nearly 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of cocaine stuffed into three plush toys, Customs Additional Director-General Seevali Arukgoda said.
“This is the biggest attempt at cocaine smuggling stopped by Sri Lanka Customs at the airport,” Arukgoda said in a statement.
Customs officials at Bandaranaike International Airport posed for photos with the cocaine, which had been neatly stuffed into just over 500 plastic capsules, with an estimated street value of $1.72 million.
The seizure follows three other hauls this month totaling nearly 60 kilograms of synthetic cannabis.
Three foreign nationals — from Britain, India, and Thailand — were arrested in separate cases.
The Briton, identified as Charlotte May Lee, 21, a former cabin crew member from London, was produced before a magistrate on Friday and further remanded until June 13, court officials said.
She was arrested on May 12 when officials discovered that her two suitcases were packed with 46 kilograms of kush, a synthetic drug.
Lee told the BBC she had travelled from Bangkok to Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo to renew her Thai visa. She described her living conditions at a prison in Negombo, a city just north of the capital, saying she spends most of her day inside, although she does get to go outside for fresh air.
“I have never been to prison and I’ve never been to Sri Lanka,” she told the BBC. “This heat and just sitting on a concrete floor all of the time.”
All four suspects, including the Thai woman arrested on Friday, could face life imprisonment if convicted.
Sri Lankan authorities have previously seized large quantities of heroin off the country’s shores, suggesting the island is being used as a transit hub for narcotics destined for other locations.
In October, a Sri Lankan court sentenced 10 Iranian men to life imprisonment after they pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 111 kilograms of heroin. In 2023, nine Iranians received life sentences in a separate drug smuggling case.
Sri Lanka’s largest single seizure of narcotics occurred in December 2016, when Customs found 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of cocaine in a shipment container of timber addressed to a company in neighboring India.
Sri Lankan authorities have seized nearly 60 kilograms of potent synthetic cannabis that foreigners tried to smuggle in this month in three separate cases, a customs official said Saturday. The majority of the drugs were reportedly seized from a former flight attendant from England who authorties say had over 100 pounds of the drug in her suitcases.
The South Asian island has long been considered a transit point for international drug smugglers, and all three suspects — from Britain, India and Thailand — could face life imprisonment if convicted.
The 21-year-old British woman was arrested on May 12, with customs officers saying she was stopped with 46 kilograms (101 pounds) of kush — a synthetic drug containing powerful opioids — packed in two suitcases.
“This could be the biggest drug bust at the Colombo airport in recent times,” said Customs Additional Director General Seevali Arukgoda.
British media, including the BBC, have identified the woman as Charlotte May Lee, a former cabin crew member from London, who had flown to Sri Lanka from Thailand.
She is being held in detention at a prison near Colombo airport and is contact with her family, her lawyer told the BBC.
The BBC reported that she denied knowledge of drugs in her luggage, and claimed they were planted at her hotel in Bangkok.
Her legal representative, Sampath Perera, told the BBC that his team was visiting her daily in prison to provide support and monitor her wellbeing.
“I had never seen them [the drugs] before. I didn’t expect it all when they pulled me over at the airport. I thought it was going to be filled with all my stuff,” Lee told the Daily Mail from prison.
On May 16, a 33-year-old Indian man was arrested at the northern seaport of Kankesanthurai.
Arukgoda said that he had been carrying four kilograms of kush.
He too has been handed over to the anti-narcotics police for further investigations.
On May 18, a 21-year-old Thai man was stopped at Colombo airport. He is accused of attempting to smuggle in nearly eight kilograms of kush.
The drug has wreaked havoc in West African countries in recent years, especially in Sierra Leone, te Associated Press reported. In 2014, Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio declared a war on kush, calling it an epidemic and a national threat.
Sri Lankan authorities have previously seized large quantities of heroin off its shores, saying it suggested the island is being used as a transit hub for narcotics being reshipped onward.
In October, a Sri Lankan court sentenced 10 Iranian men to life imprisonment after they pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 111 kilograms of heroin.
The men were among 17 arrested in Sri Lankan waters in April 2016 while transporting narcotics aboard an Iranian trawler.
In 2023, nine Iranians received life sentences in a separate drug smuggling case.
Watch the CBS Reports documentary “Arming Cartels: Inside the Mexican-American Gunrunning Networks” in the video player above.
Mexican drug cartels have been smuggling a vast arsenal of even military-grade weapons out of the U.S. with the help of American citizens, a CBS Reports investigation has found.
Exclusively-obtained U.S. intelligence documents and interviews with half a dozen current and former officials reveal that the American government has known this for years but, sources said, it’s done little to stop these weapons trafficking networks inside the United States, which move up to a million firearms across the border annually, including belt-fed miniguns and grenade launchers.
Dozens of cartel gunrunning networks, operating like terrorist cells, pay Americans to buy weapons from gun stores and online dealers all across the country, as far north as Wisconsin and even Alaska, according to U.S. intelligence sources. The firearms are then shipped across the southwest border through a chain of brokers and couriers.
This infographic was created by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division as a visual representation of intelligence findings, to depict how an American supply chain provides firearms and ammunition to Mexican cartels.
Project Thor / Obtained by CBS News
WhenCBS News pressed the Justice Department about its findings, a senior official confirmed that “We absolutely recognize the problem here that … the lion’s share of firearms trafficked to Mexican cartels are coming from the United States.”
For more than 50 years, the U.S. government has waged an unsuccessful war on drug traffickers, who are now fueling a deadly fentanyl epidemic. The free flow of American guns across the southern border empowers the cartels to protect their drug operations and outgun Mexican authorities, U.S. officials said.
“We have allowed the cartels to amass an army,” said Chris Demlein, who served as a senior special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — the ATF — until 2021.
Guns and ammunition seized by U.S. law enforcement at the border.
U.S. government photo
Demlein led the first interagency intelligence project aimed at identifying and dismantling the cartels’ international weapons supply chains across the U.S. Within months of its launch on July 25, 2018, the initiative, known as Project Thor, connected the dots between hundreds of disparate law enforcement cases, uncovering vast networks that give these criminal groups on-demand access to American guns. They briefed hundreds of government officials on their discoveries, including the National Security Council and senior Justice Department leadership.
This illustration, based on an intelligence map generated by DEA Special Operations Division Project Thor, depicts the smuggling paths of a “supernetwork” of interconnected gun supply chains that were illegally funneling military-grade firearms at the direction of the Jalisco New Generation cartel in Mexico.
CBS News
Project Thor found that the problem of cartel weapons smuggling was far worse than previously understood. They estimated that cartels were trafficking between 250,000 and 1 million weapons every year, with a retail value of up to $500 million, not including ammunition and tactical supplies, according to intelligence analysis reviewed by CBS News.
Project Thor concluded that American guns were being used to fuel an unprecedented spike in violence across Mexico. Up to 85% of firearms found at those crime scenes traced back to the U.S.
Without Project Thor, U.S. law enforcement “bureaucracies were more interested in defending their turf than prosecuting criminal organizations,” said Edwin Starr, who retired from the ATF as a senior special agent in December 2022. Starr credited the interagency program with leading to a major breakthrough in one of his firearms trafficking cases that, according to Demlein, helped take down an entire cartel gunrunning network.
On Dec. 8, 2021, ATF chief of staff Daniel Board praised Project Thor’s “insight, initiative and hard work” as he presented the team with the agency’s Distinguished Service Medal.
But Project Thor was denied funding for fiscal year 2022, according to internal documents and sources with direct knowledge, effectively shutting it down. The Justice Department and ATF would not disclose how much money is dedicated to the mission of countering international firearms trafficking to Mexico.
Over the course of four months in 2023, CBS Newsrepeatedlyasked the Justice Department about its efforts to combat international gun trafficking. When senior officials finally agreed to speak, they said they were “not familiar” with Project Thor, even as they agreed with its findings about the magnitude of cartel gun running operations on U.S. soil.
The Biden administration signaled a new commitment to tackle the issue at a June 14 press conference, pointing to the ATF’s Operation Southbound, an investigative and prosecutorial “nationwide initiative” designed to “disrupt the trafficking of firearms from the U.S. to Mexico” focused on border states. Officials also pointed to funding for gun tracing and ongoing diplomatic efforts to train and equip Mexican law enforcement with that technology.
However, other law enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic officials told CBS News they doubt their own agencies’ commitment to dismantling cartel gunrunning networks across the U.S., and criticized the ongoing approaches as “ineffective.”
“Any U.S. strategy that depends, for its success, on Mexican law enforcement efforts in Mexico is doomed to failure,” warned Christopher Landau, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico until 2021. “We’ve been talking about this for 10, 20 years. Nothing is changing. … This has been a major bipartisan failure of the U.S. government for many decades.”
Senior officials defended their approach to countering weapons smuggling out of the country.
“ATF is committed to stopping as many guns as possible from being illegally trafficked into Mexico,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach told CBS News in a statement, touting the prosecution of 100 people in the past year. “Investigating straw purchasers is just one tool that we use. Our efforts also include large scale, long term, complex investigations of entire trafficking networks.”
Neither the Justice Department nor ATF provided evidence to demonstrate that their efforts have meaningfully reduced the flow of American firearms to Mexico. U.S. law enforcement seized 1,720 firearms in the first six months of fiscal year 2023. According to Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, speaking at a news conference in June, “that’s a more than 65% increase over the same period last year.” But it accounts for less than 1% of all firearms being smuggled across the border, based on estimates by Project Thor and the Mexican government.
E.D. Cauchi is an investigative journalist covering people and institutions in power for CBS News’ longform unit. She previously worked for CNN, NBC News, National Geographic, BBC News, Al Jazeera and others, and co-authored a nonfiction book about U.S. warfare post-9/11.
