Argentina Gang Crackdown has actually Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security

Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have been blocked, she says

Murders in Rosario center least expensive in at least a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, sitiosecuador.com is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have driven rising violence and led to a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is being successful.

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

Bullrich, in an unusual interview with worldwide media, told Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and obstructing deliveries from making their method to end markets, including to Europe, where the cocaine market has expanded in the last few years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures and that's created fantastic regard for us regionally and likewise in Europe, since (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was identified in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "obviously there might be some deliveries that were unnoticed."

The security ministry validated that cocaine was not discovered in any shipments that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was unable to individually verify that.

Once a competitor to Milei as the governmental prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal offense, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the most affordable in a minimum of the last years and down from nearly 300 in 2022 and forum.batman.gainedge.org 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took workplace.

"We decided to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, including that cooperation in between the nationwide and local federal governments in Rosario had been a crucial element, in addition to the courts taking a tougher line. The federal government has actually also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

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

Andrei Serbin Pont, hb9lc.org an Argentine security and intelligence expert and president of local think tank CRIES, credited a focus on event intelligence with aiding the criminal offense reduction.

"There was a collective security effort by the nationwide government to focus on Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence instead of simply having more cops on the streets, which is a far more feasible technique," he said.

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

Last year, galgbtqhistoryproject.org she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds tens of thousands of gang members in difficult conditions that have actually drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually revealed rows of tattooed and topless inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

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

TOUGHER BORDERS

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

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being enhanced, including by constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "absence of control in current years," she said.

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

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not instantly react to a demand for forum.batman.gainedge.org comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, wikitravel.org Ricardo Lewandowski, last week invited the idea of enhancing border security in a reaction to the procedures.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei essential center-ground support, said she had been won over to the libertarian's wider financial and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have actually divided Argentines but assisted support the country.

The 2 are former rivals. During the election race, Milei labeled her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a referral to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist motion - to which Bullrich had actually shot back that the previous economic expert was mentally unstable.

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