In addition to the arrests, a large amount of drugs and stolen goods worth almost five million kronor were seized. Over 33,000 people and 22,000 vehicles were checked, according to the police.
Approximately 20 of the arrests were made in Sweden. Around 150 criminal reports have been filed: from aggravated theft and drug offenses to environmental crimes and money laundering.
The effort, which goes by the name "Empact Trident", has been carried out for several years.
New methods
Police task force leader Mikael Eliasson is particularly pleased with the cooperation between the countries and says they are trying new methods to find criminals.
Crime is evolving, so we must also evolve to stay ahead, he says.
The drugs seized include methamphetamine, cocaine, cannabis and khat. In some cases, these are particularly serious drug offenses, the strictest classification that leads to long prison sentences, says Eliasson.
My view is that we are making larger and larger seizures.
The stolen goods are moving quickly and taking alternative routes compared to before, says Eliasson, without going into details.
We stopped a vehicle in Germany with about ten stolen ride-on lawnmowers, a couple of them from Denmark just 24 hours earlier. And the vehicle was not German, not Danish, but registered in another country.
“They are probably growing”
He says the operation has evolved over the years. At first, they looked at what is called organized extortion, or theft. Now they are targeting the criminals and the networks themselves.
This gives us a broader opportunity to combat crime. Often it goes hand in hand - for example, people are involved in both drug trafficking and the transport of environmentally hazardous waste between countries.
Eliasson does not want to say whether the international networks have been strengthened or weakened over the years the operation has been running, but he is happy about what he calls "significantly better legislation" that has expanded the police's so-called toolbox.
"The networks are probably growing; I can't really answer that. But the question is what it would have looked like if we hadn't had these opportunities," he says.
