Frontex led an international operation against serious and organised crossed-border crime in Central and South-Eastern Europe that resulted in nearly 300 firearms seized and 172 smugglers arrested.
Joint Action Days (JAD) Danube 9 involved law enforcement authorities from 17 countries, including Austria, which hosted the operation’s coordination centre, as well as Europol, Eurojust and INTERPOL.
JAD Danube focused on combatting the smuggling of migrants, trafficking in human beings and document fraud. Frontex standing corps officers, along with customs, border guards and police officers from the participating countries were conducting border checks yielding significant results.
This 11-day long operation led to arrests of 122 migrant smugglers and 50 smugglers of other contraband, detection of 123 fraudulent documents and seizing of 278 firearms, 21 000 pieces of ammunition and 39 stolen vehicles.
During the operation INTERPOL confirmed 38 red notices for internationally wanted persons, including 9 for crimes related to migrant smuggling. In addition, 208 international arrest warrants were shared by participating countries. In total, 75 million checks were performed. Europol has performed 1 893 crosschecks against its databases of operational information contributed by the participating countries, which resulted in 54 potential suspects being flagged.
EU4FAST played a key overall role in the coordination of activities in providing logistic and financial support for the participating countries.
