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Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is succeeding

Cocaine exports to Europe have actually been blocked, she says

Murders in Rosario hub most affordable in a minimum of a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, akropolistravel.com Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on a mission to mark out drug gangs in the South American country that have driven increasing violence and led to a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She says she is being successful.

Argentina has actually grown in value as a transit hub for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down crucial waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi's hometown. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, in a rare interview with global media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian Milei was breaking up the gangs and blocking shipments from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened in current years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures and that's produced terrific regard for us regionally and also in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was identified in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, adding that "obviously there might be some shipments that were undetected."

The security ministry validated that cocaine was not found in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a significant European port in 2024. Reuters was unable to separately confirm that.

Once a competitor to Milei as the governmental prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal activity, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to regional federal government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the most affordable in at least the last years and down from nearly 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and akropolistravel.com Bullrich took workplace.

"We decided to strike hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, including that cooperation in between the nationwide and local federal governments in Rosario had actually been a key element, as well as the courts taking a tougher line. The federal government has actually also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

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

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence specialist and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal activity reduction.

"There was a collective security effort by the nationwide government to prioritize Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence instead of just having more authorities on the streets, which is a much more feasible strategy," he said.

Bullrich has sent an expense to congress to develop a brand-new anti-mafia law, comparable to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has 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 10s of countless 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 been a little bit, let's state, less harsh. But when we have to be difficult, we are tough," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was reinforcing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing sees to cocaine-growing areas in Peru, and increasing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being reinforced, consisting of by developing 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 "lack of control in the last few years," she said.

"We're going to start a program, a strategy, we're taking troops to the border location with Brazil," she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not right away react to a request for forum.batman.gainedge.org remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week welcomed the idea of reinforcing border security in a response to the steps.

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

The 2 are former rivals. During the election race, Milei identified 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 economic pundit was mentally unsteady.

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and she and her bloc were assisting him as he looks for 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; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien)