13/06/2026

SATURDAY | JUNE 13, 2026

9

Duo plead guilty in fatal US human smuggling case

Cryptocurrency crime ring busted AMSTERDAM: International investigators have dismantled one of the most widely used services for laundering cryptocurrency, Europol in The Hague said on Thursday, reported German Press Agency. The service known as AudiA6 is suspected of laundering more than €336 million (RM1.57 billion) between 2022 and 2025, it said. Two alleged platform administrators of Ukrainian and Russian nationality were arrested in Georgia in a coordinated operation on Wednesday. Investigators said they searched three properties, took down 25 domains and seized more than 30 servers. They also confiscated 80 vehicles and several properties in Georgia. Europol said it froze cryptocurrencies worth €692,000 and seized cryptocurrencies worth more than €86,000. Telegram accounts used by the network were also blocked, it said. Investigators believe AudiA6 became a central hub for ransomware actors and cybercriminals to cash out stolen digital assets without authorities being able to trace the money trail. Polish police arrested a Ukrainian man in connection with the case on Sep 15 last year. Europol said searches at the time uncovered leads that helped identify additional suspects. The latest international operation involved investigators from the United States, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, France and the United Kingdom as well as staff from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and the North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Police Office. North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul said Europol and the other investigators have “landed a big fish”. – Bernama-dpa Canadian police officer killed in raid TORONTO: A Canadian police officer was shot and killed in Toronto on Thursday during a raid connected to a series of recent firearm incidents, including a previous shooting at the US Consulate, local police said, reported Xinhua. Toronto police said the incident occurred at 5.40am local time (9.40am GMT) when officers were executing a search warrant at a residential apartment building. An exchange of gunfire broke out inside the building, leaving one officer mortally wounded. The fallen officer has been identified as 43-year-old Constable Marc Pinizzotto, an 18-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service. Pinizzotto was rushed to a local hospital but pronounced dead later. According to police, the raid was part of a broader investigation into multiple shootings across the Greater Toronto Area, including the high-profile attack in March, during which multiple shots were fired at the US Consulate building in downtown Toronto. One suspect involved in Thursday’s gunfire was hospitalised and remains in critical condition. Meanwhile, Toronto police have launched a manhunt for a second suspect, identified as 19-year-old Zara Jabbi. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow have publicly expressed condolences to the officer’s family and colleagues. – Bernama-Xinhua

AUSTIN: Two Guatemalan nationals pleaded guilty in a Texas federal court on Thursday to human smuggling charges stemming from the December 2021 crash of a tractor-trailer in Mexico that killed 55 of the 160-plus migrants packed inside. Josefa Quino Canil De Zavala, 43, and Alberto Marcario Chitic, 32, who were extradited to the United States, admitted as part of their plea that they conspired to smuggle adults and unaccompanied children from Guatemala through Mexico into the United States, the US Justice Department said. In one such operation, an estimated 166 migrants were crammed into a tractor-trailer truck that overturned and slammed into a bridge abutment near the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas, Mexico. Fifty-five of the migrants died in the Dec 9, 2021 crash, including a 16-year-old girl, and dozens of others were injured. Video footage of the aftermath showed bodies scattered across the crash site. Mexican authorities at the time said nearly all the victims were Guatemalan. Chiapas officials said three individuals o Both to face maximum penalty of life in prison when sentenced on Sept 9 in Texas federal court: Justice Dept The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics concluded his trip with a call for more help for migrants and action against traffickers as immigration remains a hot topic of political debate. Tenerife is one of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, which have become a gateway for tens of thousands of irregular arrivals seeking a better life in Europe. Leo spoke to hundreds of migrants at Las Raices (The Roots), a centre housed in a former military barracks that was initially heavily criticised for overcrowding. He then celebrated an open-air mass in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in front of tens of thousands of people. After visiting Madrid and Barcelona earlier in the week, he arrived in another island of the archipelago, Gran Canaria, on Thursday. He condemned “indifference” towards migrants and cast a wreath into the sea at the port of Arguineguin to honour the thousands who have died trying to reach the Canaries. “Human dignity has no passport,” he said on the dockside before blessing a faded blue cross made of wood from a boat that migrants arrived on. “Monsters lurk in these seas, traffickers who enslave women and children, and those whose indifference allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation or forgetfulness.” Nearly 1,200 individuals died or went missing on the route from Africa to the Canary Islands last year, according to the International Organisation for Migration, making it one of the

33, in Texas in December 2024. Ramos entered a guilty plea in April. Cases against the three others are pending. In other news, US President Donald Trump and his allies are pushing lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding his first-term impeachments, a White House official said on Thursday, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal. Trump was impeached twice by the US House of Representatives during his first four years in office. The first alleged an abuse of power but he was acquitted in early 2020. The second accused him of incitement of insurrection over the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. Trump escaped an ouster from power in both cases and his anger over the impeachments helped fuel his 2024 presidential campaign in which he defeated Democrat Kamala Harris. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump and his team want lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding the impeachments. White House officials have strongly urged forward progress on this issue, the White House official told reporters. The Wall Street Journal said the resolution would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a matter that has dogged him since his first term, but would have little legal significance since the Constitution provides no procedure for undoing an impeachment. “It is no surprise that sane individuals are recognising these sham efforts and are interested in undoing those shameful actions,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson when to comment on the story. – Reuters

from the Dominican Republic, a Honduran, a Mexican and an Ecuadorean were among the injured. Survivors said they had been squeezed into the trailer compartment so tightly that most people could only stand. At the time, the incident ranked among the deadliest migrant-smuggling crash in Mexico in a decade. Canil De Zavala and Chitic each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport an illegal alien to the United States, causing serious bodily injury resulting in death, according to the Justice Department. Both face a maximum penalty of life in prison when they are sentenced on Sept 9 in a federal court in Texas, the department said. “The defendants ran a calculated alien smuggling operation that moved people across borders like a supply chain, recruiting them in Guatemala, collecting their money and packing them into cattle trucks and tractor-trailers for a dangerous journey through Mexico,” said Texas Southern District Acting US Attorney John Marck. He said unaccompanied minors smuggled by the network were even given scripted language to recite to law enforcement should they be caught entering the United States. The two defendants and three other Guatemalans accused of taking part in the operation, namely Daniel Zavala Ramos, 41, Tomas Quino Canil, 37, and Oswaldo Manuel Zavala Quino, 25, were extradited from Guatemala to the United States in 2025 to face charges. US authorities arrested an additional Guatemalan national, Jorge Agapito Ventura,

Pope meets migrants at end of Spain visit TENERIFE: Pope Leo XIV met migrants and held an open-air mass on the island of Tenerife yesterday to end a visit to Spain that has highlighted the plight of irregular arrivals.

Leo greeting residents on Thursday outside the cathedral of Saint Anne where he held a meeting with bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians and pastoral workers in Las Palmas on the Canary Island of Gran Canaria. – AFPPIC

the conscience” of nations of origin and transit where migrants flee poverty and conflict, and fall prey to trafficking gangs. “We really value this visit. It is very important for us at such a critical moment,” said Mohamed Amjahdi, who arrived in the islands from Morocco on a boat when he was 17 years old. – AFP

world’s deadliest migration routes. Europe, where governments have toughened their policies under pressure from the far right, “cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves”, he said. Leo added that the tragedy must “appeal to