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Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is succeeding

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she states

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

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, forum.batman.gainedge.org Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on an objective to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have driven rising violence and caused a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She states she is succeeding.

Argentina has actually grown in value as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down 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 breaking up the gangs and obstructing deliveries from making their method to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened in the last few years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures and that's created great respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, because (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was spotted in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "naturally there may be some shipments that were undiscovered."

The security ministry validated 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 individually confirm that.

Once a competitor to Milei as the presidential prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing synthetic intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to local government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the most affordable in a minimum of the last years and below nearly 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

"We decided to strike hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, bytes-the-dust.com adding that cooperation between the nationwide and regional governments in Rosario had been an essential element, in addition to the courts taking a tougher line. The government has also targeted drug kingpins already behind bars.

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

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence professional and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal offense decrease.

"There was a collective security effort by the national federal government to prioritize Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence rather than just having more cops on the streets, which is a much more practical method," he said.

Bullrich has sent out an expense to congress to establish a brand-new anti-mafia law, comparable to U.S. RICO legislation, 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 10s of countless gang members in difficult conditions that have actually drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have revealed rows of tattooed and topless prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

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

TOUGHER BORDERS

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

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being strengthened, including by constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more tracking of entry points with Brazil where there had actually been a "lack of control over the last few years," she said.

"We're going to begin a program, a plan, we're taking soldiers to the border location with Brazil," she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not right away react to an ask for comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently invited the concept of strengthening border security in a reaction to the procedures.

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

The 2 are former competitors. During the election race, Milei identified her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a reference to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist motion - to which Bullrich had shot back that the previous financial pundit was mentally unsteady.

Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he seeks to gain seats in legal 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)