Why I've grown to like President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia

He's got cojones.

Today sees the big anti-drug meeting in Guatemala called "The International Conference for Strategic Security Support in Central America" (Conferencia Internacional de Apoyo a la Estrategia de Seguridad en Centroamérica) which includes all the local bigwigs of all countries, Presidents, Defence and Interior Ministers etc etc. When it was President Santos's turn to speak in the day's keynote address, he said this (translated):

"Their [the narcotraffickers] capacity for corruption goes far beyond what we can imagine. I assure you, and forgive me for being so frank, that here in this meeting there are many people on the narcotraffickers' payrolls and who are informing the narcos what's happening here in real time."

Damn, I like it when politicos drop the bullshit and tell it how it is.

Regarding Richard Fifer of Petaquilla Minerals (PTQ.to), cocaine, marijuana and prison

Richard Fifer, cocaine dealer

IKN would like to make it clear that Richard Glenn Fifer Carles, erstwhile governor of the Coclé region of Panama, qualified geologist and Chairman and main force behind Panama gold company Petaquilla Minerals (PTQ.to), does not have a criminal record for marijuana dealing.

The truth is that he has a criminal record for cocaine and marijuana dealing and has done his time in prison for the crimes committed, too.

Yeah, really. This guy is a drug dealing scumbag and the truth is upon us. Watch this space next week for the dirty details that he's tried to keep covered up for years.

Drug trafficking news

This just in from Spain:

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."

The normal English language newswires and media channels are due to report on this story as soon as they've worked out a way of mentioning the name "Hugo Chávez" in their copy. Cheeky little malbecs served, the end.

Deep disturbance

When it comes to narcotrafficking and the way drug kingpins spend their cash there has always been some eclectic tastes on display. Take the Mexican narco-fashion of 18k gold machine guns or diamond-encrusted bling dripping from each arm, neck and cellphone. Take Colombia's Pablo Escobar and his private zoo, complete with hippos and tigers and all sorts.

But this one posted up by The Mex Files this morning is really, deeply scary: Brazilian narcobosses and their shrine in honour of Justin Bieber. I can't bring myself to paste the photo here, so click thru and look over at RG's site and get the cold shivers down your spine, too.

Mexico's drug lords and the Catholic Church

With land in your hand, you'll be happy on earth
Then invest in the Church for your heaven.

Genesis, 'Get 'Em Out By Friday', Foxtrot, 1972

This links to a good post from Aguachile that highlights the so-called narcolimosnas (narco donations) that Mexico's Catholic Church has supposedly been receiving bigtime from the drug lords and their families. Here's an excerpt:

"It has long been an open secret - or no secret at all - that the church has happily accepted massive donations from organized crime to fund its programs, maintain its buildings, or, in the extreme case of Hidalgo, erecting temples in their honor: There, it was recently revealed that Heriberto "El Lazca" Lazcano, head of the vicious Los Zetas mafia, had practically financed the building of the chapel El Tezontle, in Pachuca."

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Peru's narco-corruption stories just get better and better

Front page of Peru's 'La Republica' today

Y'know I thought I wouldn't be revisiting this subject after last week's post that pointed to not one but three cases of corruption between the drug barons of Peru and the judiciary in their sordid pockets, but here we are again. The reason is this story that's almost too brazen and bizarre to be believed.

Today Peru's national daily 'La Republica' broke a story about our old pal Luis Valdez, the narco capo of the Ucayali Amazon basin region of Peru, the very same Luis Valdez that has been featured on several occasions here at IKN because he's knee deep in the cocaine trade, he ordered the killing of an investigative journalist and then recently got let off the charges by a compliant judge in highly dubious circumstances.

Today's story tells of the judge that, back in late 2005, originally ruled that Valdez should be liberated from the charges murder and ordering the assassintion of the journalist Alberto Rivera. thus Valdez was set free and, quite literally, got away with murder. The now ex-judge's name is David Zevallos and he has now turned up in the public spotlight again because...wait for it...he's now the president of the electoral committee of the Ucayali political party "Todo por Ucayali", whose leader is none other than Luis Valdez!

In other words, not only has Valdez been let off the charges and let out of jail again, he's also going to run for public office in his region again, but to cap it all the compliant judge that absolved him of charges in 2005 is now his political campaign manager!

But of course the cocaine problem is all Hugo Chávez's fault, right?

So what's your favourite corrupt Peru narcostate story at the moment, Otto?

Good question. There are so many to choose from, you see.

It could be the one about Luis Valdez, the cocaine capo from the Ucayali region of Amazonian Peru who was shamefully found not guilty of murdering an investigative journalist earlier this year and today left prison to be held under house arrest at his luxurious Lima pad. He's still charged with several other crimes, but when a rich dude gets to leave prison before any trial takes place the writing in on the wall in any Banana Republic.

It could be the latest twist in the long-running story of the biggest narco family in Peru, the Sanchez-Paredes family. They've just won another round in the courts to stop them ever getting arrested or going to trial. This family is up to its eyeballs in the white powder, but thanks to their large bank balances and APRA party buddies they just keep rolling along. The best reaction to last week's ruling that froze the case against them in very dubious circumstances came from Peru's main anti-drugs prosecutor who said, "There are judges (in Peru) who are in cahoots with illegal activity and with organized crime", which gets a big "No Shit Sherlock" from IKN.

No, the winner of best cocaine corruption story goes to this one cos we even get a video included. Underneath find the moving pictures, but first comes a direct translation of the report. Enjoy.

Shameful: 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.

¡VIVA INVESTMENT GRADE!

Gold, best choice for Colombian narcomoney laundering

You invested in junior mining in Antioquia, Colombia? You may be surprised to find
out exactly what kind of business activity you're sponsoring...

Colombia's 'El Tiempo' magazine got access to the sworn statements that ex-leader of the Colombian far-right wing paramilitary Salvatore Mancuso (now safely under arrest in the USA) made to a judge in one of his hearings last week, and it sure makes for interesting reading. Here we go with a translation of the first part of the El Tiempo report:

Before 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

Jim Schultz talks common sense on Bolivia, coca, cocaine and drugs

A recommended post right here, as Jim Schultz of The Democracy Center, Cochabamba Bolivia, looks at the recently published US State Dept narcotics annual report, zooms in on the samo samo written about Bolivia, notes the samo samo used as counterpoint by Evo&Co and then cuts to the chase. His six points of "things experts on all sides really know but daren't say in public" are spot on. Here's the 6th of the six as a sample:

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.

Go read the whole thing on this link.

Adam Smith would approve of Bolivia's solution to narcotrafficking

Here's one thing that's bound to be on the agenda of Dr. Evo Morales when he visits Mexico City next week. UPI reports (translated):

Published 18:27, 18 Feb 2010

Bolivia To Ask Drug Consuming Countries To Reduce Demand

The vice-minister of Social Defence, Felipe Cáceres, said that drug consuming countries will be asked to apply policies that reduce demand.

Cáceres explained that Bolivia wishes to start a shared responsibility in the fight against narcotrafficking, therefore this proposal will be presented to the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD, part of the OAS) and the United Nations Narcotics Commission (UN).

"We will propose to these international organizations that the rich industrialized countries with high levels of (illegal drug) consumption create preventative policies to reduce demand and also that they recognize the efforts of Bolivia in the fight against narcotrafficking", he said.

Cáceres announced that he will present to CICAD and the United Nations in the USA the programs developed by Bolivia in the anti-drugs fight and the eradication of excess coca leaf production.

Century Mining (CMM.v) raises enough cash to start the Lamaque mine: I wonder how she did it?

News from Century Mining (CMM.v) this morning is that the company has managed to put together the $60.75m debt&equity package it needs to re-open the Lamaque mine. You gotta wonder where the Darling Miss Peggy W found the names to invest in the company.

Oh....hold on.... Maybe this is a clue! Why is she and her company wanted for questioning in Peru in connection with the Sánchez Parades family, the nation's biggest and most notorious cocaine smugglers? Here's a translation of part of the document:

The siblings Manuel, Santos Orlando, Fortunato Wilmer and Amanda Francisca Sánchez Paredes, as well as (ringleader) Orlando Sánchez Jr., have been included by the anti-narcotics authorities in an official list of the most important narcotrafficking suspects that operate in Peru.

Amongst the companies that are included in the investigation in Lima are the offshore Panamanian Andean Mining, Inversiones Mineras Sudamericana, Import & Export, the Canadian Century Mining Finance Corp. In Peru, among other companies are mentioned eñor de Los Milagros, Villa Azul, Ganadera y Minera San Simón, Aurífero Santa Rosa, Santa Patricia.

As well as the Sánchez Paredes brothers, others connected with the invetsigations are Miguel Sánchez Alayo, Marcelina Príncipe Zamudio, Blanca Sánchez, Diego Franco Montes, Paulo Gómez Huertas, Margaret Kent, Cristian Benítez Jara, Felipe Thorndike Valdez, Gregorio Vera Vega and Bernardo Gleiser, amongst others in a long "list that grows every day" according to police sources.

Wanted for questioning in Peru? Managed to get hands on a shitload of financing to start a gold mine in Canada? Are there facts by chance related? Inquiring minds etc.........

cocaine: the peru/bolivia route

An excellent report in Bolivia's La Prensa today that goes into great detail about the routes of narcotraficking between Peru, Bolivia and the rest of the continent. It's in Spanish and it's long but it's well worth readin. Once done you'll know a lot more about the subject.

Bolivian Cocaine: Facts versus Propaganda

Here are the facts:

Here's President Morales yesterday, and notice that last bit about Bolivia's willingness to buy surveillance planes from the USA to combat drug runners, but the US wouldn't allow the sales. It's actually worse than that; Bolivia also asked the Czech Republic to sell them anti-narco planes, but due to their defence pacts the Czechs had to ask permission from the USA to sell the planes. The USA refused permission. Bolivia didn't get the Czech planes.

Bolivian President Evo Morales said Wednesday that Bolivia has seized a total of 19 tons of cocaine so far this year, more than the 11 tons for all of 2005.

"Also, in the first nine months of 2009, Bolivia eradicated 5,000 hectares of coca (cocaine's raw ingredient) without shooting a single bullet," Morales told a press conference in Quemado Palace in La Paz.

The country's anti-drug forces also discovered mega-factories of cocaine hydrochloride with sophisticated equipment, Morales said.

Morales stressed that Bolivia has achieved success in combating drug trafficking without cooperation of the United States.

Bolivia planned to buy planes with radars to detect aircraft with drug, but "the United States was against those buys," Morales added.

Here is the propaganda. Remember as you read this that Bolivia threw out the US DEA in 2008. Since the USA's "help" has gone Bolivia's cocaine seizures have improved dramatically.

WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - The United States has charged Bolivia and Venezuela with failing to do enough to fight the drug trade, but said it would continue aid to the two countries, both led by critics of U.S. foreign policy.

In an annual report, the United States said Bolivia -- the world's third-largest cocaine producer -- Venezuela and Myanmar had all "failed demonstrably" to meet their counter-narcotics obligations.

You guys up there actually think you live in a free democracy, don't you?

Semper Fi

Y'know, sometimes I wonder whether all this blogging from LatAm in English is worth it. It sometimes occurs to me that there are enough intelligent people around that can work it all out for themselves without the aid of a safety net or this humble corner of cyberspace, even in the US military.

But just when these thoughts start to well up I'm invariably reminded that the vast, cavernous majority of the commentary available in the English language about matters LatAm is TEH STOOOOOPID....

"....Ecuador ordered the American aircraft out because the new president there, Rafael Correa, was elected with the assistance of drug gangs, and getting rid of those American patrol aircraft has been a longtime goal of the drug smugglers. Correa also allowed leftist Colombian rebels, like FARC, to set up bases in Ecuador. This was exposed when Colombian troops captured FARC documents, when one of those border bases was raided. Correa was very angry about this, and tried to divert attention from his close relationships with the drug gangs and FARC, by accusing Colombia of being an American puppet and assisting the Americans in taking over South America. Or something along those lines...."

...and it keeps me rolling on. I mean, would you actually believe the name of that website quoted above is "strategy page", devoted to all things military and all things...errr...like thinking, right?

So let us salute the other 99% of those souljas who would Change™ the world....

....and remind one another that yes, oh yes, you need IKN in your life. Just admit it.

It's Bolivia's fault, of course

To combat the narcotraffickers in its country Bolivia wants a bit of air support. It has been interested in buying radar equipped planes for its FELCN anti-narco police for a while, with the latest potential supplier The Czech Republic.

However, the Czechs (just like previous potential vendors previously) have been stopped from selling their trainer craft with the necessary equipment to Bolivia by...yes you've guessed it already...the United States of America. Bolivia's Defence Minister Walker San Miguel (crazy name, crazy guy) yesterday confirmed that he'd received word from the Czech Republic apologizing for the fact that the USA gov't has stopped them from selling their planes.

Let us remember that the USA says Bolivia has a bad attitude in its (their phrase not mine) WarOnDrugs™ and accuses them of not making enough effort. Now am I missing something here, or..................

Aha! Peru's Growth Miracle Explained

Aaaah, it all makes sense now. No wonder Peru says it's growing by XpointX% per year when the number of people that suffer from calorific insufficiency (an official measure that shows people don't have enough to eat) has risen from 29% to 32% in the last two years. All this growth is due to the APRA party's favourite source of funding! According to the head of the fight against drugs in Peru in this report from AFP (Translated)

Narcotrafficking a Twenty Two Billion Dollar Business in Peru, 17% of The Country GDP

Narcotrafficking in Peru generates profits of U$22Bn (17% of country GDP), an increase of between U$3Bn and U$4Bn in the last five years, the Peru anti-drug czar, Rómulo Pizarro said Wednesday.

This surge is due to the increase in consumption and demand pressure, most of all from the European market, said Pizarro, head of the National Commission for Development and Life Without Drugs (DEVIDA)

"Five years ago this figure was calculated at U$18Bn, that is to say that we're talking of an approximate increase of between U$3Bn and U$4Bn." CONTINUES HERE

Honduras: Micheletti, coupmonger and drug runner

Makes a lot of sense.

Machetera has the cool info in English right here and if the dude is on the Honduras Defence Ministry's list of suspects you can bet your sweet bippy that the DEA has the same intel, too (as Honduras milicos are owned by the US uniform dudes).

But hey, let's get real here. Being connected to cocaine smuggling cartels and being on US suspects lists never stopped anyone getting to be a President in LatAm: Just ask Pablo Escobar's Associate 82, a guy with the strange name of "Alvaro Uribe" who was a local politico in Escobar's area of main control back in the 1980's, was fingered by the Pentagon as being a "close friend and associate" but somehow managed to become....errr...president of Colombia.

Note to Colombian narcotraffickers: Take the Pacific route in August

News from Ecuador is that the USA isn't going to wait 'til the September 18th "we be kicking you out today, gringos" day to stop anti-narcotics operations (and the odd bombing run, of course) from its Manta air base in Studmuffinlandia. The Ecuador bigwigs in charge of the caboodle today confirmed the USA's decision that the last surveillance op will take place this month, on July 17th to be exact.

So a headsup to all those marching powder entrepreneurs in Colombia and Peru; dudes, forget that cross-Venezuela route for the next six weeks or so and load all up in those semi-submarine thingies you got for the Pacific run. There ain't no bear in the air no more.

Mojitos served. The end.

Massive cocaine bust in Ecuador

This week has not been a good one for the narco scum. First there was the cocaine factory discovered and dismantled in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on May 7th. It was just being set up, had U$1m of chemical raw materials ready to roll and was estimated to be able to churn out 1.5 metric tonnes (MT) per month. The Bolivian specialist (and brave and very successful) FELCN, without the aid of the DEA, did the legwork.

Then yesterday, Venezuelan authorities arrested three people and confiscated a cool 2MT of cocaine. Again, no DEA. Again, a country supposedly unhelpful in the fight against narcotrafficking.

But today the mother of all seizures went down today in that other AxisOfEvo country, Ecuador. Three Ecuadorians and two Russians arrested, and 17MT (yep, seventeen metric tonnes) of cocaine that was on its way to Spain. In fact, the Ecuador police are still counting up the haul (it was hidden in a cargo of molasses) and say it might even get to 21MT.

Meanwhile, all quiet on the confiscation front in Colombia and Peru, the world's two biggest suppliers with an anti-narco squad run by the US DEA. Funny that, innit?

UPDATE: My mistake, Peru along with a US frigate managed to grab 250kg of cocaine in an offshore raid.

Meanwhile, in the quiet provincial border towns of Colombia....

...they've got no space left in the morgues.

In Caucasia, Antioquia, medics are complaining about the heavier that normal workload of autopsies. In the period Jan 1st to April 25th 2008 there were "just" 46 murders in an otherwise sleepy old town, but this year it's got up to a pesky 102 in the same lapse. "Here we only have one autopsy table and two old storage compartments, and on average we're doing two autopsies a day", said the doc.

As for the atmosphere around the place, here are a few quotes:

"The rumours run from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, but nobody knows anything when they're asked about a crime."

"They say that two men were in a hairdressers. On hearing a woman talk about the conflict they made the hair stylist shave her bald and remove her eyebrows, and then gave her 24 hours to leave Caucasia."

"The assassins rent one house in every neighbourhood, which allow them to hide quickly once they commit a crime and we (the police) cannot enter without a search warrant."

"The people fear for their lives, because those committing the homicides are locals, young men that were born and raised here."

So, gentle reader and lover of freedom, how does the situation in Caucasia compare to the US-backed shouts of "oppression!" that comes from the mouths of theVenezuelans with painted hands as they march noisily down streets tilting against windmills? The above is what real fear, real terror and real oppression are all about. When it's the genuine article, noise is replaced by a roaring silence and you rarely get to find out about it.