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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Police in Poland have shut down a methamphetamine laboratory and arrested two Mexican men linked to the Sinaloa cartel, one of the largest criminal organisations in the world.
Footage shared by the Polish police’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBŚP) shows armed counter-terrorism officers in a helicopter swooping in to raid the drug lab, which was located in Świecie county near the city of Bydgoszcz in northern Poland.
They detained three men: one a Polish national and the other two Mexicans who, according to investigators’ findings, “supervised the production of the drug and are linked to one of the largest cartels in north America”, announced the CBŚP.
Later, a police source told state broadcaster TVP that the cartel in question was Sinaloa, which is based in Mexico and is involved in drug trafficking across north America, Europe and Asia.
“They were ‘cooks’ responsible for overseeing the production of high-quality meth,” said the anonymous source. “Mexican cartels are increasingly sending such people to Europe. We will now determine who exactly was running the laboratory.”
The three men detained have been presented with a variety of charges, including participation in an organised criminal group and large-scale manufacture of drugs.
Over 300 litres of methamphetamine and phenylacetone were seized, as well as three tonnes of other chemicals used in the production process. Police estimate that the products could have made 330kg of the finished drug with a black-market value of over 6 million zloty (€1.4 million)
In 2022, a joint report by EU agency Europol and the US Drug Enforcement Agency revealed growing collaboration between Mexican cartels and EU-based criminal networks. It noted that the Mexican groups provided methamphetamine “cooks” to their European partners.
In May this year, French and Belgian police announced that they had dismantled a criminal organisation “with strong ties to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel” that had been involved in meth production and distribution. Last year, Spain arrested 14 people with suspected links to the Sinaloa cartel.
Poland and Ukraine have mounted a major joint operation to shut down synthetic drug production sites.
An "unprecedented" amount of drugs was seized, says @Europol, and the biggest synthetic opioid lab ever discovered in Poland was dismantled https://t.co/JeXrlr9bR1
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 2, 2024
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: CBŚP
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
