World Drug Report 2017 – A quarter of a billion people worldwide use drugs
According to the latest World Drug Report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), nearly a quarter of a billion people
News briefing – Week of 15 May
Spanish and Ecuadorian authorities seized 5 tonnes of cocaine hidden in a cargo vessel at Santa Elena, Ecuador, and bound to Spain via Panama. The haul is estimated at $250m and is considered as one of the largest cocaine seizures to date. Twenty individuals were arrested on charges of drug trafficking.
Analysis of Regional Threats on Money Laundering
The XXX GAFILAT Plenary approved the implementation of a regional study of threats on money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) of the member countries of the Financial Action Task Force on Latin America with the financial support of the European Union. The pursued objective is for countries to achieve greater effectiveness in mitigating risks…
Possible resumption of fumigation programme fuels protests in Colombia
UNODC report claimed that Colombia is experiencing an annual increase of coca cultivation of 44%, in conjunction with a 52% of production of cocaine. Reportedly, this data have forced the Colombian government to take under serious consideration resuming glyphosate fumigation programme to eradicate coca crops. The programme was suspended in early May after the World…
“El Chapo”‘s escape likely to change cocaine trafficking system
After the recent escape of Sinaloa cartel boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, from a maximum security prison located on the outskirts of Mexico City, the Mexican drug trafficking structure is likely to reconfigure. Mainly known for trafficking drugs from Mexico to the US, Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel have wide connections reaching Central and South America,…
News Briefing – Week beginning on 13 July
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.…
Narco-state declared a myth by leading French academic
In 2008 the British newspaper The Observer ran an article titled ‘How a tiny West African country became the world’s first narco state’. The unwelcome moniker gained popular currency for journalists reporting on Guinea Bissau at the beginning of the decade, but has fallen out of use since the current government came to power in…
News briefing – week beginning 11 May
The Colombian government has halted the use of the herbicide glyphosate, and said it will find alternative methods of destroying coca crops The UK’s Border Force has seized approximately 50 kilograms of cocaine at the Port of Dover, hidden inside the bodywork of a Volkswagen van Ecuadorian authorities have seized 2.2 tonnes of cocaine at…
Colombia set to end aerial spraying of coca fields
Over twenty years ago, Colombia embarked on a campaign of spraying farmland and forest with herbicides in an attempt to reduce coca crop production. Backed by the US administration of President Bill Clinton, the policy of spraying suspected coca crops became a central pillar of Plan Colombia. The US contributed funding for a fleet of…
Peru: The New Home of Cocaine?
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…