Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is succeeding
Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she says
Murders in Rosario center least expensive in a minimum of a years
By Lucinda Elliott
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on an objective to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have driven increasing violence and wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de caused a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is being successful.
Argentina has actually grown in importance as a transit hub for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually flowed down essential waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi's home town. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.
Bullrich, in a rare interview with worldwide media, informed Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and obstructing deliveries from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has broadened in recent years.
"We have actually had record cocaine seizures and that's created great regard for us regionally and also in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was identified in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "obviously there may be some shipments that were undetected."
The security ministry validated that cocaine was not discovered in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a significant European port in 2024. Reuters was not able to separately confirm that.
Once a rival to Milei as the governmental candidate for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening borders with Brazil and 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 most affordable in a minimum of the last decade and down from almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, lovewiki.faith the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.
"We decided to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, hikvisiondb.webcam adding that cooperation in between the national and local federal governments in Rosario had been a key element, in addition to the courts taking a tougher line. The government has also targeted drug kingpins already behind bars.
"We took away the power that the drug bosses had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug crime rings going. We isolated 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 criminal offense decrease.
"There was a concerted security effort by the national government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence rather than just having more authorities on the streets, which is a a lot more feasible technique," he said.
Bullrich has actually sent out a bill to congress to establish a new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has actually also gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.
In 2015, gdprhub.eu she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of countless gang members in difficult conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually shown rows of tattooed and topless inmates with their hands behind the heads.
"In our case, our system has been a little bit, let's say, less extreme. But when we have to be difficult, we are tough," said Bullrich.
TOUGHER BORDERS
Bullrich informed Reuters she was strengthening border controls to stop drug gangs, planning visits to cocaine-growing areas in Peru, and enhancing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being enhanced, including by building 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 over the last few years," she said.
"We're going to start a program, a plan, we're taking troops to the border area with Brazil," she said.
Authorities in Bolivia and systemcheck-wiki.de Brazil did not right away react to a demand for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently welcomed the idea of reinforcing border security in a response to the measures.
Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei crucial center-ground support, said she had actually been won over to the libertarian's more comprehensive economic and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have actually divided Argentines however helped support the country.
The 2 are former competitors. During the election race, Milei identified 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 pundit was mentally unsteady.
Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he seeks to gain seats in legislative 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
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Argentina Gang Crackdown has Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security
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