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The proposed new facility in French Guiana is to be built at a "strategic crossroads" for drugs mules, particularly from Brazil and Suriname, according to AFP news agency.

Most of them had been convicted for acting as drug mules.

Its network of couriers would launder the cash, pushing it through seemingly legitimate businesses like construction firms in the UK and elsewhere, or using mules to fly it in baggage to Dubai.

The NCA said its work led to 48 money mules being arrested in one month this autumn.

The authorities believe the cash mules were part of a major and ongoing operation to buy political influence run by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch named Ilan Shor.