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Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she says

Murders in Rosario center most affordable in at least 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 driven rising violence and caused a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She says she is prospering.

Argentina has grown in significance as a transit hub 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 worldwide media, informed Reuters the year-old government of Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and obstructing deliveries from making their method to end markets, consisting of to Europe, historydb.date where the cocaine market has actually expanded in the last few years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures which's generated excellent regard for us regionally and also in Europe, since (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was discovered in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, including that "obviously there may be some shipments that were undiscovered."

The security ministry confirmed that cocaine was not found in any shipments that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was not able to independently validate that.

Once a competitor to Milei as the presidential candidate for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal activity, tightening up borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing artificial intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to local federal government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the lowest in a minimum of the last decade and down from almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

"We decided to strike hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation in between the national and local governments in Rosario had been an essential element, along with the courts taking a tougher line. The government has actually likewise targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

"We removed the power that the drug bosses had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug criminal offense rings going. We isolated them," she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence specialist and president of local think tank CRIES, credited a focus on gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal activity decrease.

"There was a concerted security effort by the nationwide federal government to prioritize Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence instead of simply having more cops on the streets, which is a a lot more practical technique," he said.

Bullrich has actually sent a costs to congress to develop a brand-new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to remove 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 thousands of 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 topless prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has actually been a little bit, let's say, less severe. But when we have to be difficult, we are difficult," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich told Reuters she was reinforcing border controls to stop drug gangs, planning check outs to cocaine-growing areas 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, including by constructing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had actually been a "absence of control in the last few years," she said.

"We're going to begin 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, recently welcomed the concept of strengthening border security in a reaction to the measures.

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

The two are former rivals. During the election race, Milei labeled her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a reference to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist motion - to which Bullrich had actually shot back that the former financial expert was mentally unsteady.

Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and sitiosecuador.com she and her bloc were assisting him as he looks for to gain seats in legal 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)