Argentina’s Mauricio Macri is
stepping up the fight against drug trafficking as the reformist president seeks
to prevent the region’s powerful narcotics gangs from securing the kind of
foothold they already have elsewhere in Latin America.
Mr Macri has made taking on the
multibillion dollar drugs trade a priority since being elected in November, and
recently appointing Mariano Federici at the helm of the agency charged with
tackling money laundering.
As head of the Financial Information
Unit, Mr Federici has launched a drive to target the financial assets of
criminals. He is also seeking to mend relations with banks and international
partners that he says were needlessly soured under the previous regime of
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
“Drug traffickers like to move to
Argentina as they feel safe bringing their assets here,” Mr Federici said. “The
level of enforcement here and the pressure against organised crime has been
weak. We want to send a message that Argentina is no longer a safe place for
their money.”
Pope Francis is among those to warn
of Argentina’s creeping “Mexicanisation” — a reference to the bloody war between
the Mexican state and drug cartels that has cost tens of thousands of lives and
billions of dollars.
Mr Macri, the former mayor of Buenos
Aires, has made the fight against the narcotics trade one of three priorities,
along with achieving zero poverty in Argentina and uniting his politically
polarised country.
The president stirred controversy
last week with a decree that authorised the armed forces to shoot down
“hostile” aircraft, including planes carrying drugs. This was part of a broader
security package that included the declaration of a year-long public security
emergency and the building of a radar system along Argentina’s northern border.
Argentina has long been a transit
point for shipments of cocaine to Europe from Bolivia and Peru, two of the
three main producers of the narcotic along with Colombia. Argentina’s shared
border with Paraguay and Brazil has also long been a smuggling hotspot.
But the numbers of manufacturing
laboratories have proliferated in Argentina in recent years, and domestic
consumption of drugs has more than doubled in the past decade. Argentines now
consuming five times more cocaine than the global average.
The UN’s World Drug Report last year
ranked Argentina as the “most frequently mentioned” country in major seizures
over the past decade, having occupied third place behind Brazil and Colombia
two years before.
Worst hit has been Rosario,
Argentina’s third largest city in the heart of the country’s fertile soya belt.
At about 22 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the homicide rate in Rosario — a
major port and a place where many drug trafficking routes converge — has
spiralled in recent years to four times the national average.
Amid vicious turf wars, a gang known
as Los Monos — “The Monkeys” — has risen to power, using a network of
underground tunnels, intimate connections with local police and even footballers
to launder their money. In one incident the provincial governor’s residence in
Rosario was sprayed with bullets.
Targeting the financial assets of
the drugs gangs is vital to stopping narco-trafficking, the government
believes. Critics say a recent prison break by three men convicted for killing
businessmen connected to an ephedrine trafficking ring that worked with
Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel was only possible because of their continued access to
financial resources.
Sensational allegations have claimed
that the killings were masterminded by Aníbal Fernández, the president’s
cabinet chief — whose alias was said to be “La Morsa”, or The Walrus, on
account of his bushy moustache — so he could control the ephedrine-smuggling
business.
The accusations, which are strongly
denied, contributed to Mr Fernández’s defeat in the race last year for the
governorship of Buenos Aires province, heartland of the Peronist political
movement defeated by Mr Macri in the presidential elections.
Mr Federici, a former legal counsel
at the International Monetary Fund, was critical of the previous government’s
“repressive” approach that caused “disruptive and confrontational” relations
with banks and financial institutions. He said banks should be the main source
of information to aid the seizure of criminals’ assets. He also hit out at the
politicisation of the Financial Information Unit that had squandered the trust
of international partners.
Underlining the importance of a new
asset confiscation law, Mr Federici said the conviction rate in Argentina for
money laundering was “laughable”. He pointed to Colombia, where officials have
confiscated $1.3bn in criminal assets in the past three years, compared to
“almost zero” in Argentina.
Mr Federici also described the
“cartelisation” of Argentina, with Mexican and Colombian syndicates now
operating alongside better entrenched Peruvian and Bolivian smugglers.
“The magnitude of the threat is very
serious, and this would never have been possible without collaboration from
government officials in this country,” he said. “The penetration of
transnational crime [in Argentina] is directly linked to corruption.”
