FEATURE-Venezuela a new hot spot in global drugs trade
- From: "(F)" <expression.freedomof@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 04:18:04 -0000
http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/drugTrafficking)
By Christian Oliver
CARACAS, July 19 (Reuters) - Venezuela's role in the global drugs
trade is growing fast with traffickers stashing cocaine under shrimp
hauls on fishing boats and beneath the leather seats of luxury jets
passing through Caracas.
International anti-drug specialists say corruption inside Venezuela's
security forces has turned the country into a major route for
smugglers moving cocaine from neighboring Colombia, the world's top
producer, to the European and U.S. markets.
The United States pins much of the blame on President Hugo Chavez, a
firebrand socialist who is Washington's fiercest critic and rival in
Latin America.
Washington accuses Chavez of fanning the drug trade by cutting ties
with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005, and of doing
little to flush out corrupt police chiefs or arrest Colombian kingpins
it says are hiding in Venezuela.
"Venezuela's permissive and corrupt environment led to more
trafficking, fewer seizures and an increase in suspected drug flights
in the past 12 months," U.S. assistant secretary of state Anne
Patterson said in March.
In a sign of how comfortable traffickers feel exporting through
Venezuela, smugglers last month loaded cocaine bales onto a private
plane headed for Africa -- out in the open on the tarmac at the resort
island of Margarita's main airport.
They were not expecting to be nabbed because the operation -- run by
Colombian and Mexican cartels to smuggle more than two tonnes to Congo
-- also involved senior police and the regional anti-drugs chief.
They were all arrested, however, and the government says that shows
Venezuela is serious about tackling the cartels.
Still, the brazen tactics also highlighted why Western authorities say
Venezuelan drug-runners are forging stronger ties with powerful
Mexican cartels and making the OPEC nation an increasingly significant
cocaine route.
"What you find now in Venezuela is they do not bother to hide the
drugs in coffee or cocoa anymore, they just put it in carrier bags," a
European diplomat said.
'VICTIM'
Jet planes and fishing boats with powerful engines run huge cocaine
loads from Venezuela to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in
the Caribbean en route to Europe.
Other shipments head north on the world's biggest cocaine corridor
through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. market.
Washington says some 200 tonnes of cocaine, or about a quarter of the
world's annual supply, now transits through here every year, up
tenfold in the last decade. It also complains that international
seizures of drugs coming from Venezuela more than tripled in 2006.
Much of the cocaine is first spirited into Venezuela from Colombia
across a 1,400-mile (2,200-km) border where armed groups hold sway in
large areas of jungle.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime says Venezuela was the most
frequently cited transit country for shipments to Europe in 2005.
Italy traced 41 percent of its cocaine back to Venezuela, up from 22
percent in 2004.
Chavez insists that drug trafficking is nothing new and rejects the
charges of widespread corruption.
"We have been a victim and a bridge of drug trafficking for many years
but here, in the few places where they have tried to set up (opium)
poppy plantations, the soldiers of our glorious armed forces have
destroyed them by hand," Chavez said.
His government, whose main foreign policy is its opposition to what it
sees as U.S. imperialism, says it expelled the DEA for espionage and
running its own smuggling operations.
Interior Minister Pedro Carreno said the United States uses anti-drug
cooperation deals to gain military footholds in Latin America, and
that Venezuela refused to be caught in that trap. "They establish a
treaty to cooperate financially so that they can later impose military
bases."
'COWBOYS'
While European experts agree smuggling volumes have jumped, some
question the higher estimates of U.S. officials and say Venezuela
cooperates with European navies in the Caribbean.
Some also say the DEA had ruffled feathers by conducting operations
without informing Venezuelan authorities.
"The Americans were cowboys," said one European security source.
He said the operations included allowing consignments of drugs to
leave the country in order to trap dealers at the port of delivery.
This infuriated the Venezuelans and led to charges that the DEA was
smuggling on its own account.
"Huge quantities of drugs would leave our country so that it could be
monitored as it was handed over, but then we never got any more
information on it," Carreno said.
British and Dutch navy vessels pay a key role in patrolling the
Caribbean, particularly in intercepting Venezuelan fishing boats
racing from coves along the coast to the Netherlands Antilles, a rich
source of drug couriers with EU passports.
Although Chavez's government is clearly more interested in working
with European governments than the United States, one security source
said trafficking groups are very efficient at moving cocaine through
the Caribbean.
"There is co-operation but these fishing boats have three outboard
motors," he said. "They travel by night and they are quick."
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18342969?src=071907_1001_TOPSTORY_venezuela_a_new_center_for_drug_trade
.
- Prev by Date: Re: El peligroso juego de Hugo Chávez
- Next by Date: Re: El peligroso juego de Hugo Chávez
- Previous by thread: El peligroso juego de Hugo Chávez
- Next by thread: Chávez y Torrijos llegan a Nicaragua para aniversario de revolución
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
