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Patricia Bullrich says 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 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 nation that have driven rising violence and yewiki.org resulted in a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She states she is succeeding.

Argentina has grown in significance 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 hometown. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, in an uncommon interview with international media, told Reuters the year-old federal 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, where the cocaine market has broadened recently.

"We have actually had record cocaine seizures which's created excellent regard for us regionally and also in Europe, since (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was discovered in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "obviously there may be some deliveries that were unnoticed."

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

Once a competitor to Milei as the governmental 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 expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, raovatonline.org according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the most affordable in a minimum of the last years and below nearly 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 in between the national and local governments in Rosario had actually been a key element, along with the courts taking a harder line. The government has actually likewise targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

"We eliminated the power that the drug employers had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug criminal offense rings going. We separated them," she said.

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

"There was a concerted security effort by the nationwide government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence rather than simply having more police on the streets, which is a far more viable method," he said.

Bullrich has actually sent a bill to congress to establish a new anti-mafia law, akin to U.S. RICO legislation, to remove criminal networks, and said she has actually likewise gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

Last year, she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds tens of thousands of gang members in difficult conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have 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 say, less severe. But when we need to be difficult, we are difficult," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich told Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing check outs to cocaine-growing areas in Peru, complexityzoo.net 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 developing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more of entry points with Brazil where there had actually been a "absence of control recently," 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 instantly react to an ask for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week welcomed the idea of reinforcing border security in an action to the steps.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei essential 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 divided Argentines but assisted support the country.

The 2 are former rivals. 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 shot back that the previous economic pundit was mentally unsteady.

Bullrich said the distinctions 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 complexityzoo.net 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; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien)