Former US President Bill Clinton has apologised to Mexico, saying the US war on drugs has ‘backfired’, and has fuelled spiralling violence. Colombian police have reportedly discovered 3.5 tonnes of cocaine in the northern port town of Cartagena. US authorities have reportedly dismantled a ‘major drug trafficking network’, alleged to have shipped 130 kilograms of…
Peru attracted a new unwanted title as ‘the King of Cocaine’ when it overtook Colombia in coca production in 2013. The president of the National Commission for Development of Life and Drugs (Devida), Alberto Otarola, has explicitly stated, ‘Peru doesn’t want to be a country with the title of coca or cocaine producer’, but losing…
Benny Palmeri-Bacchi, a former Venezuelan judge, has been sentenced to over six years in prison for his role in ‘a major cocaine trafficking case’ that helped move Colombian cocaine through Venezuela, and was reportedly linked to the government of former president Hugo Chávez. In November he pleaded guilty to charges of extortion, conspiracy to obstruct…
The EU and CELAC (association of Latin American and Caribbean states) have been holding an annual ‘high level dialogue’ on drugs since 2007. A chapter in the inter regional dialogue is dedicated to drugs, and the EU is committed to exchanging viewpoints with so called producer and transit countries by subscribing to the principle of…
Small recreational drones flown autonomously by remote pilots have gained popularity.Used for photography, film-making and sports, most recreational drones are innocuous. Punitive anti-drugs strategies in Latin America may be creating a new market for drones though. For example, the destruction of landing strips in Peru by the military creates a need for new ways to…
The jury at a Manhattan federal court took just three and a half hours to find Ross Ulbricht guilty of operating the online drug marketplace ‘Silk Road’ from February 2011 to October 2013. Ulbricht had previously pleaded not guilty to seven charges of narcotics trafficking, criminal enterprise, computer hacking and money laundering. After an eight-month…
One of the unintended consequences of the dismantling of large Colombian cartels over recent years has been the return of European crime groups to Colombia. It is reported that groups from the Balkans have also arrived, hardened from years of working in a conflict zone. Striking relationships with South American partners, they are opening up…
Venezuelan officials have denounced a report that links the head of the country’s congress, President Diosdado Cabello, to the drug trade. Georgian police have seized an amount of cocaine valued at US$2.5 million at the Ninotsminda/Bavra border crossing with Armenia. In Nigeria, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has “smashed” a drug trafficking cell…
