The Helsinki District Court sentenced more than 20 of the defendants to prison terms exceeding 10 years.
Ruling on one of Finland’s biggest illegal drugs cases in history, on Friday the Helsinki District Court handed down heavy sentences to people charged with aggravated drug offences and other crimes.
Finnish police were able to bring the case to trial after receiving assistance from abroad.
The international probe Operation Greenlight/Trojan Shield, which was jointly conceived by the FBI and authorities in Australia, tricked criminals around the world into using an FBI-encrypted messaging app called Anom.
The app enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor criminals’ communications about their activities.
The district court sentenced more than 20 of the defendants to prison terms exceeding 10 years. The longest prison term that was handed down in the case was 13 years, the maximum sentence in Finland.
Fifty-nine defendants were found guilty of all or most of the charges they faced. There were a total of 66 defendants in the case, but charges against seven of them were dismissed.
The court also handed out shorter prison terms, including suspended sentences for other charges, including money laundering and firearms offences.
1,000 kg of drugs
According to the court, the defendants were behind the importation of more than 1,000 kg of drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis to Finland during 2020 to 2021.
A number of the defendants committed the crimes as members of organised crime groups. Those groups’ criminal activities were also carried out in the Netherlands, Spain and Estonia.
The scope of the trial was large, with the district court’s decision consuming more than 2,300 pages and the case taking eight months to process.
In its decision, the court noted that law enforcement’s use of the Anom app to track the suspects’ messages was a violation of their right to privacy. However, the court allowed the contents of those messages as evidence because their use did not endanger the defendants’ rights to a fair trial.
The largest amounts of drugs that were smuggled into Finland, according to police, was 770 kg of cannabis from Spain, and 706 kg of amphetamine from the Netherlands. In addition, members of the group also brought in cocaine and ecstasy from the Netherlands.
According to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the drugs were hidden in cargo shipments of products including soil and barbeque briquets.
The court’s decision in the case is not yet legally binding, as the prosecutor and defendants are able to apply for leave to appeal.
Source: yle