Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have actually been obstructed, she says

Murders in Rosario center most affordable in a minimum of a decade

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 increasing violence and resulted in a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She says she is being successful.

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

Bullrich, in a rare interview with global media, informed Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and blocking shipments from making their method to end markets, including to Europe, where the cocaine market has expanded in current years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures which's created terrific respect for us regionally and also in Europe, since (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was discovered in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, including that "naturally there might be some deliveries that were undiscovered."

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

Once a rival to Milei as the governmental prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening up borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to local government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the least expensive in a minimum of the last years and down from nearly 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took workplace.

"We decided to strike hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, including that cooperation between the nationwide and regional governments in Rosario had been a key element, in addition to the courts taking a harder line. The government has actually also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

"We removed 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 expert and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited a focus on gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal activity decrease.

"There was a concerted security effort by the national government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence instead of just having more authorities on the streets, which is a a lot more viable technique," he said.

Bullrich has sent a costs to congress to develop a new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has 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 10s of countless gang members in hard 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 need to be difficult, we are tough," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich told Reuters she was reinforcing border controls to stop drug gangs, planning sees to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, wavedream.wiki 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 developing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "absence of control in the last few years," she said.

"We're going to start 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 a demand for comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week welcomed the concept of strengthening border security in a to the steps.

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

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