Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have actually been obstructed, she says

Murders in Rosario center lowest 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 country that have driven increasing violence and led to a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is being successful.

Argentina has actually grown in value as a transit hub for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually flowed down key waterways and allmy.bio out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi’s home town. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, cadizpedia.wikanda.es in an uncommon interview with global media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and blocking shipments from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, opentx.cz where the cocaine market has broadened in the last few years.

"We’ve had record cocaine seizures and that’s generated fantastic regard for us regionally and also in Europe, due to the fact that (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was identified in Europe,” she said at her office in Buenos Aires, adding that “naturally there may be some deliveries that were undiscovered.“

The security ministry verified 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 separately confirm that.

Once a rival to Milei as the presidential 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 utilizing expert system to track gangs.

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

"We decided to hit hard against the gangs,” Bullrich said, adding that cooperation between the nationwide and local federal governments in Rosario had actually been an essential aspect, wiki.dulovic.tech as well as the courts taking a harder line. The government has likewise targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

"We took away the power that the drug employers had in the jails, who utilized the jails to keep their drug criminal offense rings going. We isolated them,” she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence professional and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited a focus on event intelligence with aiding the criminal activity reduction.

"There was a collective security effort by the national federal government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence instead of simply having more authorities on the streets, which is a much more practical technique,” he said.

Bullrich has actually sent out an expense to congress to develop a brand-new anti-mafia law, comparable to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, grandtribunal.org and said she has likewise gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

Last year, she hosted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, king-wifi.win and visited his mega-prison that holds tens of thousands of gang members in hard 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 inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has actually been a little bit, let’s state, less harsh. But when we need to be hard, we are tough,” said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing visits 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 reinforced, including by developing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more tracking of entry points with Brazil where there had actually been a “absence of control in recent years,” she said.

"We’re going to begin a program, a plan, we’re taking soldiers to the border location with Brazil,” she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not right away react to a request for remark. Brazil’s Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week invited the concept of enhancing border security in a response to the procedures.

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

The 2 are former competitors. During the election race, her a leftist “bomb-thrower” - a referral to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist movement - to which Bullrich had shot back that the former financial expert was mentally unstable.

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 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