Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 15, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
Remember that massive shipment of cocaine that was held in November of 2012 in Malaysia? Don’t remember?
Just to jog your memory, a container with about US$7 million dollars worth of cocaine was held in Malaysia towards the latter part of 2012. The drugs were believed to be consigned to Mozambique and were suspected to have been shipped by a major Nigerian drug smuggling cartel.
Now it has been revealed that the federal agents in the United States and their counterparts in Italy believed that there was a conspiracy by the mafia to use Guyana to ship cocaine in food items to Italy. However, when that container was held in Malaysia in 2012, it allegedly slowed down the plans of the conspirators, no doubt because the seizure would have meant that containers originating from Guyana would have been subject to greater scrutiny in foreign countries.
In case you did not remember or did not know, persons were held, charged and jailed in Guyana for that shipment. So it is surprising that concern is now being expressed about cartels using Guyana as a shipment point for the trade in narcotics.
Given where Guyana is situated in reference to North America, once shipments out of South America came under serious scrutiny, the cartels would seek other countries as transshipment points. That is what Guyana has been for decades, a transshipment point.
We do not have cartels based here. Foreign cartels are using Guyana to facilitate the shipment of their goods.
No Guyanese has the resources to move the value of the drugs that are believed to pass through our ports to North America and Europe. Any Guyanese player would be small fish and would receive only a processing fee for cooperation. The large drug shipments emanating from various countries in the Caribbean have long been suspected to be part of drug cartels operating from other bases.
The cartels that operate in South America have links to other cartels and they use middlemen to move their drugs around. This is why it is surprising that persons in Guyana should be claiming that there are cartels operating in Guyana. The cartels would never be based here. Instead they would use locals to assist in moving shipments and for this a fee would be paid.
Recently there was a massive seizure of drugs operating out of other Caribbean islands and other countries that are transshipment points for the movement of narcotics. In fact, not long after the Malaysian bust, the local authorities held a large shipment of cocaine which was being exported in fish designated for China.
This past week, a number of persons in Italy and the United States were arrested for conspiring to import cocaine into those countries, in part using Guyana. Judging from the reports in the media, no shipments were proven to have been made. The case is not about a drug bust. It is about plans that were hatched to import drugs in food from Guyana using some supposed Mexican cartel that was supposed to be based here. The evidence being used to convict the men is apparently what was told to an undercover agent acting as an informant.
But it is possible that there may have been a real plan to use Guyana. Guyana’s borders are porous and a large amount of drugs do find their way from South America into and out of the country.
Guyana has a responsibility to address this problem. But this problem is one that should be of greater concern to the countries that receive the drugs and those that supply the drugs.
Given Guyana’s own weak law enforcement systems and the pervasive corruption in that system, the best strategy for dealing with this problem is international cooperation such as what led to the action this past week.
Local law enforcement seizures cannot break the foreign cartels. Never can! This is why the Americans changed the focus from drug interdiction to dismantling the cartels by arresting the cartels’ leaders.
Arresting local intermediaries or making busts will not break the might of the foreign cartels. These cartels will find other intermediaries or find other countries through which to ship their drugs. As such, it is for the countries in which the cartels are based to take action against these cartels.
Guyana does not have international cartels based within its jurisdiction. The cartels are based outside of Guyana and utilize local expertise. If Guyana had cartels, they would have owned Guyana by now.
The DEO knows these facts and this is why they are not establishing an office here. They have an office in Trinidad and even that has not stopped massive drug shipments from that country.
Nor can Guyana attempt to effectively police its borders. This too is impossibility. It would result in a waste of resources.
The best strategy is for the recipient countries of the narcotics to take action against the cartels. The Americans and Mexicans and now the Italians are making inroads in dismantling the cartels. They should continue.
This is where the fight should be centered.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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