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Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she states

Murders in Rosario hub 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 country that have driven rising violence and resulted in a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is succeeding.

Argentina has actually grown in significance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has flowed down essential waterways and 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 a rare interview with international media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and blocking deliveries from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened over the last few years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures and that's produced great respect for us regionally and also in Europe, because (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was identified in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, including that "of course there may be some deliveries that were undiscovered."

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 not able to separately confirm that.

Once a rival to Milei as the governmental candidate for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing synthetic intelligence 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 decade 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 in between the nationwide and regional federal governments in Rosario had actually been a key aspect, in addition to the courts taking a harder line. The 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 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 gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal offense decrease.

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

Bullrich has sent a costs to congress to establish a brand-new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to remove criminal networks, and said she has actually likewise 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 difficult conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually shown rows of tattooed and partially nude prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

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

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing sees to cocaine-growing areas 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 strengthened, consisting of by developing a short 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 over the last few years," she said.

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

Authorities in and Brazil did not instantly react to a request for comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week invited the idea of strengthening border security in a reaction to the procedures.

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

The two are former competitors. 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 actually shot back that the former economic expert was emotionally unstable.

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)