Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have been blocked, she states

Murders in Rosario center least expensive in a minimum of a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, townshipmarket.co.za 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 actually driven rising violence and loft.awardspace.info resulted in a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She says she is being successful.

Argentina has actually grown in importance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has 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 a rare interview with worldwide media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and obstructing shipments from making their way to end markets, including to Europe, where the cocaine market has broadened over the last few years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures which's generated excellent regard for us regionally and likewise in Europe, due to the fact that (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was detected in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, including that "obviously there may be some deliveries that were undiscovered."

The security ministry confirmed that cocaine was not discovered in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was not able to independently verify 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 pipewiki.org using expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to regional federal government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the most affordable in at least the last decade and engel-und-waisen.de below nearly 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took workplace.

"We chose to strike hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation between the national and local governments in Rosario had actually been a crucial aspect, in addition to the courts taking a harder line. The federal government has actually likewise targeted drug kingpins already behind bars.

"We removed the power that the drug bosses had in the jails, who utilized the jails to keep their drug crime rings going. We separated them," she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence specialist and president of local think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on event intelligence with aiding the criminal offense reduction.

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

Bullrich has actually sent a bill to congress to establish a new anti-mafia law, gratisafhalen.be similar to U.S. RICO legislation, animeportal.cl to remove criminal networks, and said she has 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 thousands of gang members in tough conditions that have from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have revealed rows of tattooed and topless inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has been a little bit, let's say, less severe. But when we have to be tough, we are difficult," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was strengthening border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing check outs to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and enhancing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being enhanced, consisting of by developing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more tracking of entry points with Brazil where there had actually been a "lack 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 area with Brazil," she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not immediately react to a request for wakewiki.de remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently welcomed the idea of strengthening border security in a reaction to the measures.

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

The two are former rivals. During the election race, Milei identified 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 pundit was mentally unsteady.

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and she and her bloc were assisting him as he seeks to gain seats in legislative 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)