Posts
All Comments
The Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana's capital, plays as a clearing Portr, a crucial role. Furthermore, the ports of Tema and Sekondi are used. At the border post Aflao (Togo), Elubo and Sampa (Cote d'Ivoire) plays also from many things. In 2004 alone, in Ghana, approximately 620 tons of cocaine seized 71 tons of heroin and 765 tons of cannabis. The amounts involved are significant.
Some 90 percent of Serbian citizens believe that corruption is a customary occurrence in Serbia.
An increasing amount of cocaine from Latin America is reaching Western Europe through the southeastern part of the continent, according to the EMCDDA data.
Even though the major amount of the Latin American cocaine still goes directly to Western Europe, the counties of Central and Eastern Europe are emerging as a convenient new transit route, according to Laurent Laniel from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, as cited by BGNES.
The cocaine traffickers are said to be using more and more the Balkans where there is already a thick network of channels for all kinds of trafficking – human, drug, or arms.
Possibly the most disturbing social and political reality, one that we cannot seem to deal with, is that this terrible industry has increasingly become the only option for the millions who live in perpetual poverty.
Quite simply, drugs are the only part of our great 21st-century global, free-market society they can get their hands on, like Jamaica’s 21stcenturyRobin Hood.
But growing suspicion that the army operation to capture Christopher 'Dudus' Coke and extradite him to the US turned into a bloodbath of extra-judicial killings is threatening to sweep away public support for the government's attempt to assert control over what has been called a 'state within a state'.
The recent arrest
of a deportee, Ene Patrick, 34, and eight others for allegedly
smuggling about 11.45kg of illegal substances have further confirmed
experts’ worries on the rising cases of drug trafficking in the country.
Rear Admiral Anderson added 'We re starting to see the use of submarines on the West coast of South America. 'The expectation is that if they re successful there they will start to use those more exotic means in other passages.'
Santo Domingo. - A small plane that took off from Puerto Plata International Airport (north) with a flight plan towards Venezuela, and which suddenly disappeared from radars, was found in Honduras after transporting as much as 2,000 kilos of cocaine, according to estimates of that country’s antinarcotics authorities.
The finding is the latest in a spate of flights by small planes whose crews are using Dominican Republic as a sort of international operating center of drug transport.
U.S. demands for the extradition of a notorious gang leader have exposed an island paradise as a violent narcostate teetering on the edge of chaos.
There is a wider challenge facing the region and the international community. The 'war on drugs' has not only failed, but positively promotes corruption and armed violence – not only in the Caribbean, but also across Central and South America, West Africa and in the inner cities of Europe and North America.
“I have always said that the organized crime in Bulgaria resembles the dormant cells of Al-Qaeda. There are coordinating units, but when they commit four or five crimes these people get to know their whereabouts and start to work independently.”
“Crime has invaded the Caribbean region like a cancerous growth,” Mills said, adding that the Caribbean is “caught in the crossfire” of drug-producing countries in central and South America and the drug-consuming U.S. and Canada.
The unusual fatal incident in a distant country drew the attention of the broader public to murky 'protection and safety agencies', established mostly by veterans of the wars of the 1990s.
Most of their members sell their skills as bodyguards or provide armed protection both at home and abroad, with activities often bordering or even linked to organised crime as the two were intermingled in the 1990s, particularly in Serbia.
Engagements abroad, said to bring in thousands of dollars in monthly wages, may range from protection of oil fields in Iraq to those involved in the drug business in Latin America.
It was discovered only recently that Latin America is a haven for many Serbian criminals who are engaged in the illegal drugs trade or who are fugitives from the law.
Three prisoners died and another 25 were injured during a riot at Bogota's La Modelo prison, sparked by protests over the transfer of an inmate in a bid to control micro drug trafficking within the jail.
“Bubo Na Tchuto is actually the force behind the forces,” said Dr. Abdel Fatau Musah, the political director for the Economic Community of West African States, a regional bloc of nations. “The fact that he is controlling things is very unpleasant for the region.”
In the eyes of the American government, Mr. Na Tchuto is a trafficking mastermind in a country that has become a global narcotics hub: the point man, for instance, when hundreds of pounds of cocaine were unloaded from a plane at the minuscule local airport two years ago.
President Fernandez said that DR is 'overwhelmed' by drug trafficking and crime....
Could it be that at an operational level, the police High Command is so lacking in vision and proactive capacity that it did not rehearse and plan for the events of last week? Or is it that the much-pronounced operational independence of the police is no more than a poorly-constructed mirage.
Conspiracy theories are widely spread in the West African region and should seldom be listened to. But with growing international evidence that Guinea-Bissau is turning into a drug marketplace, the rumour about drug capital being behind the plan to get rid off Prime Minister Gomes cannot be ruled out.
The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) on Monday disclosed a new modus operandi of pirates which involves seizing vessels plying international routes before selling these as renamed ships to unsuspecting buyers.
The Jamaican government declared a state of emergency in portions of Kingston, the capital, on Sunday after supporters of a gang leader who is wanted in the United States on gun and drug charges attacked three police stations in an attempt to pressure the government to let him remain free, officials said.
Criminal gangs along the highways and rail lines increasingly are working in league with powerful narcotics cartels that are diversifying into other types of crime, experts said.
When I was in Kingston, I noted that almost every house was surrounded by thick cement walls topped with ironwork spikes clearly designed to prevent unwanted access. With the addition of sandbag barricades and concertina wire as shown in these police photos published by the Jamaica Observer, any police incursion necessitating going from house to house in that section of Kingston would be quite difficult. The Tivoli Gardens neighborhood has been involved in several violent confrontations with police over the years. The Jamaica Gleaner notes that notorious shoot-outs with police have occurred there in 2008, 2005, 2001, and 1997. The 2001 incident left 27 dead. After the 2005 incident, the head of the Jamaican Defense Force called Tivoli Gardens, 'the mother of all garrisons.'
Yet even if the emirate were to sacrifice its breezy business climate, illegal traders would just go elsewhere, says Prof. Jean-François Seznec at Georgetown University in Washington, a Gulf specialist.
Dubai follows a long line of entrepôts where smugglers and money launderers gather, he points out, arguing that "there's always a market for this kind of free trade."
“Holland is at the centre of Europe’s cocaine routes. This is largely thanks to the Port of Rotterdam and the proximity of Germany. The Netherlands is also a favourite place for the criminals to invest their illicit profits or to go to ground. It’s not like they’re in the country just to traffick cocaine. They also need to do their money laundering.”
Criminality, particularly arms and drugs trafficking which have developed in the region for the past several years, has thus appeared to many Sahraouis to be the only viable prospect for the future, according to the centre.
The members of the National Reserve have been asked to report for duty at 1800 hours today (6 p.m.) and be prepared to go into action as tension rises in sections of the Corporate Area.
Since Monday, thugs have blocked most of the entrances and exits to Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town in what they claim is an effort to prevent the security forces from getting to Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, also called 'President'.
Coke is facing possible extradition to the United States.
The likely instability prompted National Security Minister Dwight Nelson to declare on Tuesday that the security forces are alert and equipped to take on any challenges at this time.
'The security forces are adequately resourced to deal with any form of intimidatory tactics being employed by criminals who are seeking to destabilise the country,' Nelson said.
But yesterday, members of a JDF team in an armoured vehicle faced the full force of the criminals as they attempted to enter Denham Town from Hannah Street.
After the JDF team used the armoured vehicle to push through a blockade at the entrance to Denham Town, gunmen opened fire at them.
Jamaica has caved to US pressure to extradite alleged drug kingpin Christopher 'Dudus' Coke to New York, but it'll have to drag him out of his stronghold in the capital to do so. Gunmen, who have set up barricades blocking all entrances to Kingston's Tivoli Gardens neighborhood and vowed to defend the man they call 'the president,' opened fire on soldiers in the area yesterday and the city is braced for a wave of violence, the Jamaica Gleaner reports.
WEST AFRICA needs an anti-piracy centre similar to East Africa’s MSC(HOA), British Chamber of Shipping president Jan Kopernicki has told Fairplay. WEST AFRICA needs an anti-piracy centre similar to East Africa’s MSC(HOA), British Chamber of Shipping president Jan Kopernicki has told Fairplay.
At least 50 Serbian mercenaries, veterans of the war in the former Yugoslavia, are working in Colombia and Bolivia as bodyguards to powerful drug cartels, according to Serbian media reports published Wednesday.
The case has spurred political leaders in Santa Cruz to denounce the presence of Colombian, Russian and Brazilian drug cartels in the region, but the police have denied that those outfits are operating in the region, claiming that the proper conditions for their appearance in Bolivia do not yet exist.
Gray economy here could even be as high as 50 percent of the current volume of Greek economy.
Unemployment has reached about 20 percent in Serbia and Croatia, with the grey economy in the former estimated at 40 percent of activity. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, unemployment stands at more than 45 percent.
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Officials say three Serbs and three Bolivians have been killed in suspected drug violence in the Andean country's east.
There’s another tactical problem with pacification that never would have occurred to me: Violence aside, the move basically shoved the richest people – the criminals - out of the favela, creating a need for a new livelihood for merchants and survival-level entrepreneurs (like the boy to your right and his family) in these neighborhoods. This is where technology is coming in.
The Colombian government confirmed Wednesday that the FARC guerrilla group have logistic and trafficking networks in Brazilian territory, and use the Amazon River to transport drugs
As rumors of the government's decision spread before the official announcement, the streets of downtown Kingston emptied as businesses and government agencies closed early out of fear of violence. Coke's supporters have been rumored to be stockpiling weapons to prevent his arrest since the extradition request was revealed in August.
“Relations with Serbia are still fundamentally complex,” they believe, according to this, and add that the armed conflicts with ethnic Albanian groups in neighboring Macedonia, the “obvious problems” EULEX is encountering in Kosovo, organized crime and corruption in all government structures in Kosovo, the failing economic and social situation, are all signs of the problems that were brought on by the “independence extorted by the (ethnic) Albanian government in Priština”.
Much like Serbia or Croatia Bosnia became 'a hostage state' as the UNDP says where people in power enabled criminal or 'mafia networks' to openly breach the laws and make profits 'through corruptive transactions with public officials and politicians in power’’. In Bosnia this also led to murky privatisation where companies were sold for nominal sums of a few euro and the new owners mostly did nothing with them.
One a former Telus exec who dates a celebrity fitness instructor, the other a family man whose wife is the head of the Cowichan-Duncan Chamber of Commerce
Increasingly global features have created new defining descriptions of borders outside the traditional notion of 'geography' or 'natural' border characteristics. But within the context of these new defining features emerge border problems similar to those experienced by geographically adjacent territories. The fresh concept of a Jamaica - Britain border is defined by differences between the economy of the former as a developing state and that of the latter as a developed state. This defining characteristic fosters the two main border problems, illegal immigration and drug trafficking, via lucrative opportunities for a better life and huge profits from drug sales. As a far more dominant border problem, drug trafficking has connected Jamaica and Britain in a drug producing and consumption web. The problematic nature of this connection has heralded bilateral efforts to curb drug trafficking across the Jamaica - Britain border. The result has been the strengthening of a Jamaica - Britain focus on border problems, particularly on drug trafficking but also on illegal immigration matters in terms of their connection to drug trafficking. This article analyses the basis for a Jamaica - Britain border. Within that context it examines the problems affecting this border. It demonstrates that Jamaican - British agreements have proven beneficial in curbing border problems across the Jamaica - Britain border region.
Spain – the main entry point for cocaine into Europe – had by far the highest number of seizures per capita (149). But Ireland was higher than Belgium (52) and Britain (51).
Figures for the Netherlands and Portugal, other big importers and consumers, were not available.
A new generation of ruthless gangsters is emerging in the city at the heart of Britain's cocaine trade, and they are talking to the merciless Latin American paymasters of the global business.
But in a remarkable mass protest, even under threat of service interruption, millions of Mexicans are refusing to submit their personal data, for a very Mexican reason: They don't trust the government.
Below the grounds of Nottingham Castle and across the city there is a labyrinth of medieval tunnels, dungeons, maltings and cellars — people even carved primitive living quarters out of Nottingham’s sandstone cliffs.
Their concerns follow revelations that Minister Limaj, who is from Tha�i's party, will face charges of money laundering, organised crime, fraud in office and soliciting bribes.
They said the convent's South American caretaker organised religious trips in which smugglers posing as pilgrims hid cocaine in their prayer books.
Mr Ibori disappeared from Nigeria last week after a large crowd thwarted an attempt by Nigerian police to rearrest the former governor.
Massive occupations of two areas of central Bangkok the past two months show that the rise of Thailand's 'red shirt' protesters is one of the most significant developments in Asia in 25 years, as it signals a new type of conflict involving entrenched elites and millions of workers who have migrated from farms to cities across Asia.
And delivering the feature presentation last Friday, Dr Cort defended regional governments saying that despite their inability to stem the tide, “most governments had diverted scarce resources from social and economic programmes to fight the drug trade.”
Mr. Giles said there was strong evidence of the drug barons using money to buy influence at the political, law enforcement and judicial levels, adding that it was important that West African countries and their citizens understood the threats posed by those barons and how to deal with them.
According to a report of heads of anti-narcotics enforcement agencies in the East African Community countries, drug barons are taking advantage of marriage laws in Kenya to hide their activities.
'Marriages of foreign and local drug barons/traffickers to local women (in Kenya) are a means of legitimising their stay and camouflaging their involvement in drug-trafficking,' says the report.
The report says that there is an increase in recruitment of European couriers, both young and elderly. 'There is also recruitment of local couriers by foreigners.'
"There is a sense that [corrupt] people have got away with it and that has deepened the fury...."
Kenya is increasingly becoming a destination for hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, thanks to the lawlessness in Somalia, local and international experts have warned.
Security sector reform is vital to boost stability in this coup-prone, drug-trafficking country. Continuous political instability - there have been three governments, three prime ministers and three presidents since 2006 - has blocked leaders from building up basic services such as health and sanitation, or improving people's living conditions.
There are currently nine police units in Guinea-Bissau, each with overlapping and unclear missions, and inadequate resources and training; a justice sector which is strongly influenced by political power, lacks sufficient laws or the means to enforce them; and top-heavy armed forces which are not content to be led by civilian rule, according to the EU.
The armed forces have played a direct role in much of the country's recent violence, including the 1 April events, according to analysts.
Roughly 91.8 per cent of the respondents in the survey think that corruption among public officials is either “widespread” or “somewhat widespread”
These are good days to be a drug dealer in Spain. More than 3,700 tonnes of contraband is thought to have made landfall in the past year - mainly hashish from Morocco and cocaine from Colombia - before passing into the rest of Europe. The authorities managed to seize only 10%.
Now the recession has handed traffickers another advantage: a growing pool of jobless people. Spain has 20% unemployment, the highest rate in Europe. For the young it's worse: two in five cannot find work. Many are turning to one of the few industries that is truly recession-proof.
