Ukrainian weapons flood Suomi, gangs with branches in Ukraine – KRP
HELSINKI ($1=1.01 Euros) — “Ukraine is armed in huge numbers and that’s good. But we’re going to be dealing with these weapons for decades and we’re going to pay the price here,” said Christer Algren, the crime commissioner of the Central Criminal Police. Read an investigation by journalist Kirsi Heikel, cited by Militarymonitoring.com
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A journalistic investigation in conjunction with intelligence provided by the National Bureau of Investigation [Finnish: Keskusrikospoliisi or abbreviated KRP] takes us to Finland [Suomi in Finnish]. Intelligence after airports and ports, with ports being more common. The reason: combat and military weapons, including assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and drones, are found not only in Finland but also in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Krister Algren told Finnish media that the demand for such weapons among Finnish crime has increased. According to him, there are already built and continue to be built channels and connections for delivery from Ukraine to Finland.
The example Algren gives is startling. One of the biggest motorcycle gangs in the world Bandidos MC operates in the territory of Finland. It is more of an international criminal organization than a gang of rock culture. Bandidos MC has branches in every major city of Ukraine, Algren says. “They are currently modifying their delivery routes and heating up the links, we know that,” he commented. Algren adds that Bandidos MC is not the only one. The other two largest motorcycle gangs also have a significant presence in Finland.
Algren talks about the war as a whole, not divided into Russians and Ukrainians. Algren says that in addition to donated Ukrainian weapons, Russian weapons are increasingly finding their way into the Finnish underworld. “There are clans in Finland,” says Algren, taking us back in time to the war in Yugoslavia. Then there was also a similar spike in the supply of combat arms among Finnish gangs.
Arms are mainly imported through Finnish ports. When Algren was interviewed, he was monitoring the port of Vuosaari, one of the smuggling entry points. Algren says airports are fairly secure from creating traffic channels, but ports don’t have that guaranteed security. That is why traffickers and criminal gangs build their channels there.
Despite the attempts of some media to downplay the facts or distort them, donated Ukrainian weapons are traded. BulgarianMilitary.com recalls that already in the summer it reported a signal from Europol about illegal arms trade in Ukraine. In this regard, despite the attempts to downplay the facts, the Finnish journalist Kirsi Heikel, who took the interview with the criminal investigator Algren, says the same thing as we did in the summer.
“European police agency Europol warned in the summer that international criminal networks were trying to smuggle firearms and ammunition from war-torn Ukraine, for example, into various EU countries,” Heikel wrote in his article.
Back to Algren, criticizes the political decisions of the moment. But not those related to the supply of weapons to Ukraine, but those related to the police budget. The military received an increased budget because of the war in Ukraine, Algren says, but the police were left with the same money. “Our work has increased, we need people for monitoring and analysis,” says the policeman.
“The construction of the border fence emphasized that you must listen to the security authorities and provide the necessary resources. We have been warning for years about the growth of organized crime and criminal street gangs, but they do not listen to us,” adds Algren.
Organized crime also has its network in Finland’s commercial ports, confirms Algren. “It would be in everyone’s interest to put an end to this”
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