http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=307063 <http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=307063&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/> &area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/ Africa <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> World drug trade zooms in on Africa <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> Madrid, Spain <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif> 08 May 2007 05:05 <http://banner.coza.com/transpix.gif>
<http://ad.za.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/354d/0/0/%2a/r;93805430;0-0;0;16450589;5725-220/240;20543340/20561234/1;;~sscs=%3fhttp://www.mg.co.za/Subscriptions/Subscribe.aspx> Africa is threatening to become the world's newest drug nightmare as Colombian narcotics barons scheme to turn the continent into a hub for shipping cocaine to Europe, the head of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said on Tuesday. In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, DEA administrator Karen Tandy said drug-interdiction officials battling the $300-billion a year global drug trade are also very worried about Africa's new role as a weigh-station for Europe-bound heroin from south-west Asia, particularly Afghanistan. "Africa will be, in terms of a drug hotbed, one of our worst nightmares if we don't get ahead of that curve now," Tandy said on the sidelines of a major international anti-drug conference being held in Madrid by the DEA and Spain. Lured by Europe's voracious appetite for cocaine, the strong value of the euro and lax law-enforcement structures in the poor countries of Africa, Latin American drug-trafficking net works are "setting up shop" in nations such as Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Côte d'Ivoire in the west of the continent and Kenya in the east, Tandy and other DEA officials said in the interview. Africa "has emerged as a drug hot spot, a hub, in just the last several years", Tandy said. In the case of cocaine, the drug is shipped ready-to-consume by boat to Africa and sent on to Europe by land, plane or ship, or it is stored in Africa, said Russell Benson, the DEA regional director for Europe and Africa. Traffickers also carry on with traditional smuggling routes, with Spain as the main gateway for cocaine entering Europe, but Africa is a tempting, new and additional conduit because of its spotty law enforcement and porous borders. "They are looking for a vulnerable spot," Benson said. "It is the path of least resistance." Added Tandy: "Drug networks are criss-crossing the globe. There are no direct routes anymore." Europe's appetite fo r cocaine is strong and growing -- Tandy said it is similar to the cocaine craze of the 1980s in the United States -- and users on the continent pay in euros, a currency that has risen sharply against the dollar in recent years, making the these consumers an irresistible target for Colombian drug cartels, the DEA said. The cash flow has led the traffickers to come up with a new money-laundering technique in which they simply smuggle euro notes back home in bulk, millions of euros at a time, rather than employ the old, traceable method of bank transfers. In Colombia, for instance, traffickers then sell euros on the black market to currency traders at a rate slightly below the aboveboard rate. They lose a bit in the transaction but don't care because they thus obtain clean Colombian pesos. And euros from drug profits then trickle their way into the economy. There are so many euros floating around in Latin America these days that of the €1,7-billion that entered t he United States in 2006, 90% of that came from Latin America, not Europe, Tandy said. Tandy was in Madrid to attend the International Drug Enforcement Conference, a 25-year-old forum that the DEA holds each year to meet with colleagues from around the world to discuss the war on illegal drugs. This is the first time it has been held outside the Americas, and Spain was chosen because of its role as the main gateway for drugs entering Europe and what DEA officials called its tenacious effort to fight this onslaught. Spain leads Europe for cocaine seizures and is fourth in the world, and accounts for half of all hashish seizures, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said. And it and other countries face increasingly ingenious traffickers, now known to use techniques such as dropping loads of cocaine fitted with radio-transmitting buoys into the Atlantic and having ships pick up the drugs, said Maria Marcos Salvador, head of Spain's Organised C rime Intelligence Centre. -- Sapa-AP [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
