Brazil’s Supreme Court justices have been discussing the possibility of decriminalise the personal possession of marijuana. Six votes are needed for the bill to pass and three out of the 11 judges have already voted in favour. According to the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) approximately 62 tons of cocaine were seized last…
According to the Coca Crop Monitoring Survey released by the UNODC, cocaine production in Bolivia declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease. The surface under coca cultivation in 2014 is the lowest since UNODC began its monitoring survey in 2003. Through the use of satellite…
Peru’s Congress approved the resumption of the aerial interdiction practice, which would allow police forces to shoot down flights suspected of transporting cocaine and other illicit drugs in Peruvian air space. According to President Ollanta Humala, this law would act as a deterrent in the fight against drug trafficking. Since January 2015, more than 36…
The Guyanese authorities arrested a mother and a daughter allegedly accused of trafficking cocaine in Georgetown. They pleaded not guilty after being caught selling cocaine to a police officer. The US Coast Guard intercepted a narco-submarine transporting over 7 tons of cocaine, worth approximately US$181 million. The authorities were able to seize 5,400 kg, while…
Colombian police have seized approximately 2.3 tonnes of marijuana in the village of Dabehia, Antioquia department. According to the authorities, the drugs allegedly belonged to the paramilitary group of the Urabeños. The Gambia hosted the first international conference on drug dubbed, “Moscow-Africa anti-drug dilogue”. The conference aimed to enhance strategies to tackle drug trafficking in…
A new police unit was established in the Indian city of Ramanathapuram, Tamilnadu province, to prevent and fight drug trafficking between India and Sri Lanka. A Serbian court sentenced Darko Saric, a Balkan drug lord, to 20 years in prison for allegedly smuggling cocaine from Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay through Balkan countries to Western Europe.…
Two Ghanaians were accused by the Ghanaian authorities of allegedly aiding a Bolivian drug ring to smuggle approximately 5,800 kg of cocaine from Bolivia to Burkina Faso. The two accused are a businessman with connections in Latin America and an ex-officer of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). According to the prosecution,…
The increasing cooperation between Peru and Bolivia in the fight against drug trafficking led to the destruction of at least 50 clandestine airstrips in Peru and to the seizure of more than a dozen small planes in the Bolivian Amazon. In a joint operation of the US and the Costa Rican coast guards, police forces…
A sharp increase of seizures of multi-tonne cocaine loads on pleasure craft bound for Europe from the Eastern Caribbean testify to the increasing capacities of law enforcement agencies. On 23 May, Portuguese Polícia Judiciária searched a 24 metre long pleasure boat that had arrived at Faial island a couple of days before. Hidden inside a…
Enhancing skills in asset recovery and money laundering investigations was the focus of a specialised five-day training course for law enforcement officers in Latin America that took place from 20 – 24 April in Santiago (Chile). Part of an already established collaboration between the GAFILAT-EU project and the INTERPOL Regional Bureau for South America, the…
