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Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she states

Murders in Rosario center lowest 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 mark out drug gangs in the South American country that have actually driven increasing violence and resulted in a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She says she is being successful.

Argentina has actually grown in importance as a transit hub for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down crucial waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi's home town. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, in an uncommon interview with worldwide media, forum.batman.gainedge.org told Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and blocking deliveries from making their method to end markets, including to Europe, fishtanklive.wiki where the cocaine market has expanded in the last few years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures and that's generated excellent respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, since (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was spotted in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, adding that "obviously there may be some deliveries that were unnoticed."

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 unable to individually confirm that.

Once a competitor to Milei as the presidential prospect for higgledy-piggledy.xyz the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal offense, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, smfsimple.com according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the most affordable in a minimum of the last years and below almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

"We chose to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation between the nationwide and regional federal governments in Rosario had actually been an essential aspect, along with the courts taking a tougher line. The federal government has also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

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

Andrei Serbin Pont, an security and intelligence expert and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on gathering intelligence with aiding the crime decrease.

"There was a concerted security effort by the national federal government to focus on Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence instead of just having more authorities on the streets, which is a far more feasible strategy," he said.

Bullrich has sent out an expense to congress to develop a new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and wiki.die-karte-bitte.de said she has actually also gained from security forces in Britain and fishtanklive.wiki 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 hard conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually revealed rows of tattooed and partially nude inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has been a bit, let's say, 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 check outs to cocaine-growing areas 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 reinforced, consisting of by constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more tracking of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "absence of control over the last few years," she said.

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

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not immediately react to an ask for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, ai recently welcomed the concept of reinforcing border security in a response to the procedures.

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

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

Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and pattern-wiki.win her bloc were assisting him as he looks for 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)