A suspected drug trafficker wanted in connection with an international drug trafficking operation through the Belgian port of Antwerp has been arrested, Dubai Police said on Monday.
Othman El Ballouti, who was sanctioned by the US last year, he was arrested on an international arrest warrant issued by the Belgian authorities.
“Ballouti has been handed over to the Dubai Public Prosecutor’s Office for legal proceedings related to extradition,” police said in a statement.
It was not immediately known if El Ballouti had a lawyer.
El Ballouti, 37, is believed to have been living in the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula that is also home to Abu Dhabi. he was sanctioned in 2023 by the US Treasury who described him as “a high-level drug trafficker”.
“Ballouti runs an international criminal organization that smuggles significant quantities of cocaine via sea containers through the port of Antwerp in Belgium for wider distribution throughout Europe,” the Treasury Department said at the time. “Othman El Ballouti’s money laundering networks and narcotics supply chain are linked to companies based in the People’s Republic of China, as well as South American cocaine suppliers.”
US Department of the Treasury
At the time the sanctions were issued, the US made a point of listing El Ballouti’s address as a high-end apartment complex in downtown Dubai, near the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building top of the world
With the United Arab Emirates now at the helm of international police body Interpol, the country has faced fresh questions over its lax controls on money laundering and reluctance to extradite suspects. This has only increased as Russian money flows into the nation amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
In response, the UAE has made several high-profile arrests to extradite suspects back to the West.
The arrest is the latest in a series of major cocaine busts around the world in recent days. on friday, Russia said had arrested suspected members of a Colombian cartel trying to smuggle tens of millions of dollars worth of cocaine into Europe. Meanwhile, authorities in the Dominican Republic confiscated almost 9.5 tons of cocaine of a shipment of bananas to the country’s most important seaport.
The day before that, Portuguese police said had dismantled “one of the largest” cocaine laboratories in Europe in an operation that led to seven arrests and the seizure of around 1,500 kilograms of the drug.
At the end of November, the police in the Balkans arrested 11 suspected members of a criminal syndicate responsible for smuggling cocaine from South America to Europe. Also last month, the said the Colombian Navy Authorities in dozens of countries seized more than 225 metric tons of cocaine in a six-week mega-operation that uncovered a new Pacific trafficking route from South America to Australia.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.