Argentina Gang Crackdown Has Dried Up Cocaine Exports Security

Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is being successful


Cocaine exports to Europe have actually been obstructed, she states


Murders in Rosario center lowest in a minimum of a decade


By Lucinda Elliott


BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American nation that have actually driven increasing violence and caused a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She says she is prospering.


Argentina has grown in significance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down key waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi's hometown. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.


Bullrich, in an unusual interview with global media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and obstructing shipments from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened recently.


"We've had record cocaine seizures which's produced fantastic regard for us regionally and also in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was discovered in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, adding that "of course there might be some deliveries that were undetected."


The security ministry confirmed that cocaine was not discovered in any shipments that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a significant European port in 2024. Reuters was unable to separately validate that.


Once a rival to Milei as the governmental prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening borders with Brazil and systemcheck-wiki.de Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing synthetic intelligence to track gangs.


In Rosario, according to regional government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the least expensive in at least the last years and down from almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, forum.altaycoins.com the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.


"We decided to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation in between the national and regional governments in Rosario had actually been a crucial aspect, in addition to the courts taking a tougher line. The government has likewise targeted drug kingpins already behind bars.


"We eliminated the power that the drug employers had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug criminal activity rings going. We separated them," she said.


Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence expert and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on event intelligence with aiding the crime decrease.


"There was a concerted security effort by the national federal government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence instead of simply having more authorities on the streets, which is a far more viable method," he said.


Bullrich has sent a bill to congress to establish a new anti-mafia law, akin to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has actually also gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.


Last year, she hosted El Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of countless gang members in tough conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually shown rows of tattooed and topless inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.


"In our case, our system has been a little, let's say, less extreme. But when we need to be difficult, we are difficult," said Bullrich.


TOUGHER BORDERS


Bullrich told Reuters she was reinforcing border controls to stop drug gangs, planning visits to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and increasing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.


Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being strengthened, including by constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more tracking of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "lack of control over the last few years," she said.


"We're going to start a program, a strategy, we're taking soldiers to the border location with Brazil," she said.


Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not right away respond to a demand for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week invited the concept of enhancing border security in a response to the procedures.


Bullrich, trademarketclassifieds.com a political veteran who has brought Milei crucial center-ground support, said she had been won over to the libertarian's more comprehensive financial and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have divided Argentines however helped stabilize the country.


The two are former rivals. During the election race, Milei identified her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a recommendation to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist motion - to which Bullrich had actually shot back that the previous financial pundit was emotionally unstable.


Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he looks for to gain seats in legal mid-term elections set for later this year.


"We're more libertarian than conservative now," she said.


(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott. Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and Daniel Ramos in La Paz; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien)