GitLab

Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have actually been blocked, she states

Murders in Rosario center most affordable 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 mark out drug gangs in the South American nation that have driven rising violence and resulted in a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She states she is prospering.

Argentina has grown in significance as a transit center 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 an unusual interview with global media, told Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and blocking shipments from making their method to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has expanded in the last few years.

"We have actually had record cocaine seizures which's produced great regard for us regionally and also in Europe, because (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was spotted in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "of course there might be some deliveries that were unnoticed."

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

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

In Rosario, larsaluarna.se according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - 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 office.

"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 an essential element, in addition to the courts taking a harder line. The federal government has also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

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

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 decrease.

"There was a concerted security effort by the national government to prioritize Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence rather than just having more police on the streets, which is a far more practical technique," he said.

Bullrich has sent a bill to congress to establish a brand-new anti-mafia law, akin to U.S. RICO legislation, forum.kepri.bawaslu.go.id 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 hard conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians 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 bit, let's state, less harsh. But when we need to be difficult, we are hard," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich told Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, planning visits 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 strengthened, consisting of by constructing 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 "lack of control in current 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 annunciogratis.net comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week invited the idea of enhancing border security in a reaction to the steps.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei essential center-ground support, said she had been won over to the libertarian's more comprehensive economic and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have divided Argentines however helped stabilize the country.

The 2 are previous rivals. During the election race, Milei identified her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a reference to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist movement - to which Bullrich had shot back that the former financial expert was emotionally unsteady.

Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and her bloc were assisting him as he seeks 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)