GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 17-year-old youth led police on a wild car chase through the streets of Geneva and the autoroute around the city early Monday morning 26 December, reports Le Matin. He reportedly stole a VW Golf in Eysins Sunday night. The car was spotted by border guards near La Croix-de-Rozon at 05:40, then again by police in front of the Kempinski Hotel on the Quai du Mont Blanc 20 minutes later.
Police chased him to Chambésy along the Rue de Lausanne at speeds that reached 180kph, according to the newspaper, with the car driving on the wrong side of the road, then up past an embassy on the Rue de la Paix where a guard, suspecting a suicide bomber, shot at the car. He reportedly ran a red light and made it to Gare Cornavin train station going 100 kph before taking Montbrillant and the Rue de Servette up to the autoroute, where he attempted a u-turn despite a divider.
Once his car crashed he ran for cover on a construction site, where police, with the help of a dog, found the young man, who tested negative for alcohol, but who had consumed cocaine, according to the newspaper (police have not yet confirmed the details of the report).
Part of the cocaine haul (photo: Valais police)
SION, SWITZERLAND – A Swiss-Italian cocaine ring operating between Milan and canton Valais, mainly in the Val d’Anniviers and Goms Valley areas, was dismantled at the end of January, police say. The investigation continued for several weeks.
Seven people were arrested and five remain behind bars, one of them a Swiss man from Valais and the other four Nigerians, two of whom are residents of Italy and two of whom near Brig, where they have B permits.
The two from the Brig area were arrested for selling 2.7 kg of cocaine. The woman from Italy was caught in the act of hiding 210 g of cocaine “in her private parts”, police say, and the man from Italy was arrested the same day after being identified as the ringleader.
A 51-year-old Ghanaian man was arrested for selling the drugs they supplied, in the Brig area, and a 23-year-old Frenchman was also arrested, for selling the cocaine to young consumers in the Val d’Anniviers region.
The investigation began in October 2010 and led police to question 33 consumers, one of whom was arrested on other charges, a 20-year-old French youth who admitted to several car thefts and break-ins in the Val d’Anniviers.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Customs officers in Geneva, at the Bardonnex post, had the slippery task Monday 23 May of destroying 2,470kg of melting margarine that was carried last week in a regular truck, under tarpaulin, from Portugal. The wholesaler in Geneva who ordered the goods told officials that he was planning to re-refrigerate it and supply the bakery business with it.
They pointed out that not only did he not have a license to import perishable foods, but that margarine left unrefrigerated for 90 hours in the heat poses a serious health risk. The quantity imported could have been used for 200,000 croissants.
Customs officials say that in the Mont Blanc tunnel fire in 1999 that cost several lives and closed the tunnel for months, margarine and flour fueled the fire. Margarine must normally be transports in a seal refrigerated truck.
The truck carrying the Portuguese load passed through several tunnels in France en route to Bardonnex.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Police in Zurich arrested an unusual-looking drug runner Wednesday at Kloten Airport, a man disguised as a missionary, complete with flowing robes. The Romanian man, whose costume was impeccable, nevertheless raised the suspicions of a customs officer who checked his bag and didn’t find a Bible.
The 37-year-old man was x-rayed and several balls of cocaine were spotted in his digestive tract. He was carrying 500 gr of the substance.
A second arrest for drugs was made at the airport Wednesday. A Portuguese man traveling from Brazil to Spain was carrying 2 kg of cocaine in his carry-on bag.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A drug bust this past weekend in Geneva resulted in five people arrested and 10 kilos of cocaine seized.
According to information first presented by the Tribune de Genève, and confirmed by Geneva prosecutor, Adrian Holloway, a Spanish national and four Colombians were arrested for their alleged involvement in the trafficking network.
According to Holloway, a forty-year-old Spaniard driving a car with Vaud license plates was detained in the early hours of Sunday 17 April at the Mategnin border with France. He was reportedly carrying 10 kilos of cocaine in the car.
The man was being followed very closely by another driver, a Colombian national, who was then arrested by authorities. The individual is suspected of being the leader of the trafficking gang.
Two more men were arrested in Geneva and one woman was arrested in Fribourg in connection with the bust, all Colombian nationals allegedly tied to a drug trafficking network in their country of origin.
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Some CHF7,000 in cash, 1.5kg of marijuana and 93 packets (85 grams) of cocaine were seized by authorities in canton Vaud Tuesday 22 February when they accompanied staff from the Nyon refugee centre, Établissement vaudois d’accueil des migrants (EVAM), on a search of the premises.
Forty-seven of the 101 single men who live in the centre were checked during the search, which EVAM is allowed to carry out, without advance warning, under Swiss law.
Police note in a statement issued after the 14:00 search that it was undertaken after complaints from people in the area and following several incidents at the centre earlier this year. Violence has broken out on occasion, including one incident where 90 residents of the centre were involved in a fight, apparently over money, in early January. One man was knifed during the brawl.
Between one banana and the next, you could find a packet of cocaine in Switzerland this week
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Emmenthal, Graubuenden, Thurgau: conservative Swiss cantons suddenly found themselves in the news Thursday evening 25 November as the accidental recipients of 100 kg of cocaine, with a street value of CHF1.5 million.
The coke, in small packets, was discovered in crates of bananas in several locations. Federal authorities say it was not meant to be delivered to the Swiss market, and they are investigating.
The woman who discovered 70 kg of cocaine in Bern, and who alerted police, was checking the weight of the crate of Colombian bananas.
There was no cocaine in this import
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -Magnetic Resonance Symmetry (MRS), the technique behind MRI scans done in hospitals could well be adopted by customs officials, if Swiss researchers in Lausanne and Geneva have their way. MRS has been shown by the group to be useful for scanning large cargoes and spotting cocaine that is being smuggled in wine bottles without having to open or disturb the cargo container.
A man in the UK reportedly died in 2009 as a result of unwittingly consuming cocaine-laced wine, but customs officials have a tough job spotting such bottles, or have had until now. They must carry out drug-panel tests on open bottles, but “first, contaminated cargo can be overlooked, since it is not possible to check a large number of samples,” writes Giulio Gambarota of EPFL in the Wiley Online Library.
“Second, cargo with expensive wine cannot be systematically sampled at a reasonable cost. Thus, a ‘non-invasive’ approach is of interest, as it would allow for an increase in sampling rate, without alterations to the cargo itself.”
The research work showed that “dissolved cocaine can be detected in intact wine bottles, on a standard clinical MR scanner” in about a minute, making it the option of choice, writes the lead author.
17 people behind bars, 15kg cocaine and CHF80,000 seized
Water cartons used to carry cocaine into Switzerland
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Seventeen members of a Nigerian drug trafficking group have now been arrested, say canton Vaud police, who have been working with Lausanne-based border guards, and Dutch and French police. The leader of the group has been arrested at his base in The Netherlands and CHF80,000 in cash was seized, as was 15kg of cocaine. The trafficking ring had already used mules to carry at least 50 kg of cocaine into Switzerland, with a street value of CHF50.5 million, say Vaud police.
The trafficking ring was discovered when border guards checking people on a TGV train from Paris to Lausanne in May 2009 were suspicious of water cartons, which turned out to contain 3.5 kg of cocaine. The woman from Cameroon who was carrying them was arrested on the train and has been held in Paris. Her sister, who is Swiss, was found to have similar cartons when she stepped off the train in Lausanne. Police established that 15 drug runs had been made into Switzerland, and in August 2009 they arrested two Polish women at a hotel in Lausanne. The drug ring had changed its tactics and the two had swallowed 2.5 kg of the drug, then used a car to drive the cocaine into the country.
The two Polish mules were hired in Rotterdam and paid €1,500 to deliver the goods. The two told police they had delivered 60kg throughout Europe, of which half was to Switzerland.
British fashion designer Alexander McQueen took a mix of cocaine, tranquilizers and sleeping pills before he hanged himself 11 February, an inquest in the UK has determined. McQueen suffered from what his psychiatrist called a mixed anxiety and depressive disorder. He had been checking the Internet for ways to commit suicide before his death, which came on the eve of his mother’s funeral.
Geneva and Lausanne (GenevaLunch) – Authorities are concerned that heroin being passed as cocaine is being sold on the streets. This, authorities say, can be potentially deadly for drug users.
According to authorities, snorting heroin can induce a cardio-respiratory failure. A man died in Geneva this week after snorting heroin which he believed was cocaine. The drug dealer who sold the man the fatal dose was arrested, however, authorities believe there is still more heroin on the streets being passed as cocaine.
Heroin seized by the Canton Vaud Police - Courtesy PCV
In other related news, the Canton Vaud Police announced it had dismantled a network responsible for importing 42 kilos of heroine to Switzerland within a five month period.
Fifteen people were arrested in Lausanne, Zurich and Neuchatel during the o
ne-year operation. Thirteen out of 15 people arrested were from Kosovo, where the authorities say, the drug was coming from.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - French tennis player Richard Gasquet was exonerated by the Court of Arbitration for Sport Thursday 17 December from any fault or negligence over cocaine in his system, which he says was from kissing in a nightclub. The CAS agreed his assertion is the most likely explanation for the minute amount of the drug found in his system 28 March during the ATP tournament in Miami, Florida, USA.
The amount was so small that it did not reflect social use of the drug, but rather incidental contamination, the court says. “It was also established that the player was clearly not a regular cocaine user, even in very small amounts.”
Chateau de Bethusy, Court of Arbitration for Sport, Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - French tennis player Richard Gasquet took part in a seven-hour review of his suspension by the Court of Arbitration for Sport Tuesday 10 November. The review follows demands by Wada (World Anti-Doping Agency) and the International Tennis Federation for his penalty to be increased to a one-year ban.
The review came on the day when Wada celebrated its tenth birthday, with director general David Howman saying “All over the world, awareness is much higher today than it was ten years ago . . . Global anti-doping efforts in general have become smarter and much more sophisticated with experience.”
Europe’s rising demand for cocaine and other illegal drugs has opened up new territories on Africa’s west coast to Latin American drugs cartels, which see higher margins in Europe and an easier time with the law in West African countries. The US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports that it is seeing the same gangs it fights in Mexico and Colombia appearing in countries like Guinea-Bissau, dubbed Africa’s first “narco-state.” Rising demand from Europe and a strong Euro have fueled the supply, according to a report from George Mason University in Virginia, USA. West African countries are a trans-shipment area of choice to Europe because of its proximity and because poverty, years of war, and endemic corruption have weakened institutions that could combat drugs crime. BBC, CNN
Vaud, Switzerland (20 minutes, Fre) - Confirmed cocaine users will risk losing their driver’s licenses in the canton of Vaud whether they are behind the wheel or not at the time of use. Jean-Christophe Sauterel, spokesperson for the Vaud cantonal police, says that consumption of cocaine impairs a person’s ability to drive and merits the suspension of driving privileges. Vaud follows in the footsteps of both Geneva and Valais which have toughened their positions on cocaine use, according to Sauterel in an interview with 20 Minutes.
Singer Natalie Cole, daughter of legendary singer Nat King Cole, appeared on a CNN talk show Tuesday 31 March to discuss her long battle with drug abuse and hepatitis C. Intensive chemotherapy caused both of Cole’s kidneys to fail and she is now on dialysis three times a week. On airing the show, CNN studios received a flood of emails from people offering to donate a kidney should they turn out to be a match. CNN
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – Police have arrested 35 people in connection with cocaine sales, mainly in the Lausanne area, from 2005 to 2008. Twenty-one have been turned over to a judge in connection with money laundering or trafficking the drug and the other 14 are being charged with possession.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Police in Lausanne have dismantled a cocaine ring, arresting five Africans, the ringleader of whom is based in The Netherlands, after several months of investigation. They seized 33 kilos of the drug, with a street value of CHF3.3 million.
