In 2009, the total area under illicit coca bush cultivation in South America decreased for a second consecutive year, as a result of a significant reduction of that area in such cultivation in Colombia. The total area under coca bush cultivation in the region in 2009 was 158,800 ha, 8,800 ha less than in 2008 (a decrease of 5 per cent). The Board is pleased to note that in 2009, the total area under illicit coca bush cultivation in Colombia decreased by 16 per cent, to 68,000 ha. In contrast with the situation in Colombia, the total area under illicit coca bush cultivation increased to 30,900 ha in the Plurinational State of Bolivia (an increase of 1 per cent) and to 59,900 ha in Peru (an increase of 7 per cent), in 2009, the fourth consecutive year in which such cultivation increased in those two countries.
Jan 19, 2011
Bolivia to receive combat aircraft from China
LA PAZ - BOLIVIA is set to receive six Chinese-made combat aircraft to be used to fight drug trafficking, the head of the Bolivian Air Force said on Tuesday.
General Tito Gandarilla, the Air Force commander, told local journalists that the K-8 Karakorum jets are scheduled to be delivered in April, at a cost of US$58 million (S$74.5 million).
The aircraft, bought through a loan from China, will be the first of their kind for Bolivia, which currently has only training and freight aircraft.
Gen Gandarilla explained that the jets 'have a lifespan of 15 to 20 years' and have the ability to intercept illegal crafts that 'in Bolivian airspace without authorisation'. The aircraft will be used mainly around Cochabamba in central Bolivia, where there is heavy production of coca plants used to make cocaine.
The Bolivian government also plans CONTINUES
The Guardia Civil (Spanish police force) at Barcelona's El Prat airport has detained two pilots of an Argentine private medical transport plane that was carrying a 900kg cache of cocaine, according to information received by the EFE news agency."
2003: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2004: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2005: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2006: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2007: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2008: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2009: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
2010: USA writes a report for US consumption about how horrible drugs are and how the little brown people are to blame. Little brown people reject the US view. Nothing is done, situation gets a little worse.
Bolivia's government set out to erradicate 5,000 hectares of illegal coca plantations in 2010. It has already reached that figure and now hopes to reach an unprecedented target of 8,000Ha.
Its FELCN anti-drugs police force has so far this year seized 21.3 tonnes of cocaine or cocaine paste, 965 tonnes of marijuana.The same FELCN is cutting at the root of the problem too, by destroying so far this year 19 crystallization plants, 14 cocaine recycling labs, 4,129 factories (when unrefined paste is produced) and destroying 5,761 maceration pits.
In a unique show of unity, several Colombian armed groups congratulated Lady GaGa's success at the MTV Video Music Awards and offered to reward her unconditional support for the country's armed conflict.
The letter, signed by leftist rebel leaders and bosses of neo-paramilitary gangs, was delivered to her label Interscope with an estimated 20 grams of cocaine. "Enough for a nice little celebration of the awards and plenty of inspiration," the letter said.
‘Would somebody mind telling me what a black hotel is?’ Matlock demanded of the air in front of him. ‘I happen to take my holidays in Madeira. There never seemed anything very black about my hotel.’
Fired by a need to protect the subdued Hector, Luke appointed himself the somebody who would tell Matlock what a black hotel was:
‘You buy a bit of prime land, usually on the sea, Billy. You pay cash for it, you build a five-star luxury-hotel resort. Maybe several. For cash. And throw in fifty or so holiday bungalows if you’ve got the space. You bring in the best furniture, cutlery, china, linen. From then on your hotels and bungalows are full up. Except that nobody ever stays in them, you see. If a travel agent calls: sorry, we’re fully booked. Every month a security van rolls up at the bank and unloads all the cash that’s been taken in room rentals, bungalow rentals, the restaurants, the casinos, the nightclubs and bars. After a couple of years, your resorts are in perfect shape to be sold with a brilliant trading record.’
No response beyond a raising of Matlock’s avuncular smile to maximum strength.
‘It’s not only resorts either, actually. It can be one of those strangely white holiday villages — you must have seen them, trickling down Turkish valleys to the sea — it can be, well, scores of villas, obviously, it can be pretty well anything that’s lettable. Car hire too, provided you can fudge the paperwork.’
1) Produce your cocaine
2) Transport your cocaine across the porous Amazon jungle border between Peru and Brazil
3) Exchange your cocaine at an agreed rate for gold produced by Brazil's "Garimpeiros" the informal gold miners there.
4) Smuggle the gold back into Peru and take it to your mine
5) Add the Brazilian gold to the production pile from the supposedly working mine.
6) Declare all the gold, the Peruvian and the Brazilian product, as "Made In Peru" and run it through the company books.
7) Et Voila! Washed, rinsed, tumble-dried and ironed with a touch of starch in the collar.
Front page of Peru's 'La Republica' todayShameful: Judge Frees Narcotrafficker and then Goes to Drink Beer With Him
Both were filmed in a bar in the town of Chachapoyas together with two police officers and the head of prison security, where the sentence for illegal trafficking of drugs was dropped.
Judge Edgar Víctor Gómez Quispe and the man he had just freed from a sentence for illegal drug trafficking, Teófilo Portocarrero Fernández, were found at a bar in Chachapoyas at the same table and with four bottles of beer.
Last July 16th at midday, the judge of the court of Penal liquidation in the province of Rodríguez de Mendoza of the High Court of Justice in the Amazonas (region of Peru) freed the drug runner on conditional bail. But four hours later, both were spotted by personnel from the Office of Control of the Magistrature (OCMA) drinking beer in a bar.
Also there were two police officers and the head of security at the prison where Portocarrero's sentence had been overturned, according to the news program "24 Hours".
"It's a great disappointment for us to be faced by a situation of this nature, with a magistrate that does not have the qualities of integrity required. It cannot be right for a judge to drink alcoholic beverages with a prisoner", said Enrique Mendoz, head of OCMA, who suspended judge Gómez and has begun an investigation into this grave error.
You invested in junior mining in Antioquia, Colombia? You may be surprised to findBefore a Federal court in Washington, the extradited paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso has revealed how the narcotrafficking business launders its cash via the sale of hundreds of ounces of gold that go through the Colombian Republican Bank without ever being suspected.
As he explained in several different audiences that began in January 2009, the metal is bought in Panama and a group of mafia money launderer bring it into Colombia to melt it down and then hand it over, in portions, to a group of local mayors and public officials.
These then take the gold to the bank, report it as locally produced and earn millionaire sums in state royalties.
Mancuso said that some money launderers keep up to 70% of the royalties that the government pays and the rest is stolen by the mayors.
He has already given the names of the municipalities that are involved in this business and in which the AUC (his paramilitary group) received the juicest profits: Ayapel, Buenavista, Montelibano, Planeta Rica (Córdoba) and others, located in the rich Bajo Cauca of Antioquia state.
Just two of these towns (Buenavista and Planeta Rica) received more than COP2700 million (U$1.46m) in royalties in the period during which Mancuso admits having been involved in the deals between launderers and town mayors.
This laundering technique was not known the the US authorities. Because of this, this week the US government sent its director of the Office of Control of Foreign Activities (OFAC) Adam Szubin to Colombia to look for ways that will establish amongst the local authorities what percentage of the 1.57m ounces of gold that Colombia produces might come from this fictitious mining.
CONTINUES HERE
Valentín Mejillones Acarapi, who was in charge of the Bolivian President's investiture ceremony in 2006, was arrested at his home in El Alto "while working on the washing or purification of cocaine", according to the local anti-drugs commanding officer.
The "amauta" (Aymara elder/wise man) who invested President Evo Morales in 2006 as indigenous spiritual leader in an Andean religious ceremony was detained by Bolivian anti-drug police and accused of manufacturing liquid cocaine, a police chief today said.
Valentín Mejillones Acarapi, 55, was captured Tuesday in the Andean city of El Alto next to La Paz, when the existence of a cocaine factory was discovered in his house. His son and two Colombian nationals were also detained who had in their possession 350kg of liquid drug, according to police reports.
"In the operation we found four people, a Colombian husband and wife and the other two people, father and son, owners of the house, working on the washing or purification of cocaine", said Colonel Félix Molina, commander of the anti-drugs police.
Mejillones was today identified as the principal Aymara priest who on January 22nd 2006 invested Morales as leader of the indigenous peoples in a religious ceremony at the pre-Inca temple of Tiwanaku, one day before taking office as the President of Bolivia.
A government spokeperson, Iván Canelas, denied any relationship between the Morales government and the detainee, saying that, "according to the investigation he should be sanctioned if found to have committed a crime."
Peru is top coca producer: UN
BOGOTA (Colombia) - PERU has displaced Colombia to became the world's leading producer of coca leaf, the source plant for cocaine, a UN report said on Tuesday.
Fully 45.4 per cent of coca in the world comes from Peru, while 39.3 per cent is grown in Colombia and 15.3 per cent in Bolivia, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
'Peru has surpassed Colombia as the world's leading coca leaf producer,' Aldo Lale, the UNODC representative in Bogota, said at a press conference.
Peru produced 119,000 metric tonnes of coca leaf in 2009, while Colombia produced 103,000 tonnes during the same period, Mr Lale said. -- AFP
6. If the U.S. is genuinely serious about its drug problem then it should stop a decades-old show called the War on Drugs, and adopt a series of public policies that nearly every serious analyst knows is the most effective course, including: free drug treatment for those addicted the moment they ask for it (because that's when it has a shot at working); treating addiction as a disease instead of a criminal offense; and sucking billions of dollars out of the hands of criminal syndicates and into the coffers of public treasuries by legalizing marijuana, regulating it, and taxing it.
