Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful
Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, akropolistravel.com she says
Murders in Rosario hub least expensive 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 being successful.
Argentina has grown in importance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually flowed 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 uncommon interview with international media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and blocking shipments from making their method to end markets, to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually expanded recently.
"We've had record cocaine seizures which's generated terrific respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was identified in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, including that "obviously there may be some shipments that were undetected."
The security ministry verified that cocaine was not discovered in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was unable to independently confirm that.
Once a rival 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 synthetic intelligence to track gangs.
In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the most affordable in at least the last decade and down from nearly 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.
"We decided to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation between the nationwide and local governments in Rosario had actually been a key factor, in addition to the courts taking a harder line. The federal government has actually also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.
"We removed the power that the drug managers had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug crime rings going. We separated them," she said.
Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence professional and president of local think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal activity reduction.
"There was a collective security effort by the nationwide federal government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence instead of simply having more cops on the streets, which is a much more practical method," he said.
Bullrich has sent out a bill to congress to develop a brand-new anti-mafia law, comparable to U.S. RICO legislation, to remove criminal networks, and said she has actually also gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.
In 2015, she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds tens of countless gang members in difficult conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually shown rows of tattooed and partially nude prisoners 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 hard," said Bullrich.
TOUGHER BORDERS
Bullrich informed Reuters she was reinforcing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing sees to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and boosting cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being enhanced, consisting of by developing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also 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 plan, we're taking soldiers to the border area with Brazil," she said.
Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not right away react to an ask for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week welcomed the idea of strengthening border security in a reaction to the steps.
Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei key center-ground support, said she had been won over to the libertarian's broader financial and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have actually divided Argentines however helped stabilize the country.
The 2 are former competitors. During the election race, Milei labeled her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a referral to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist movement - to which Bullrich had actually shot back that the former economic pundit was mentally unstable.
Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and her bloc were assisting him as he seeks to gain seats in legislative mid-term elections set for later on 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 actually Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security
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