Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have actually been blocked, canadasimple.com she states

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

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, forum.altaycoins.com is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American nation that have actually driven rising violence and caused a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is succeeding.

Argentina has actually grown in importance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down key waterways and sitiosecuador.com 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 global media, pattern-wiki.win told Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and obstructing deliveries from making their method to end markets, including to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually expanded in the last few years.

"We have actually had record cocaine seizures and that's created fantastic respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, due to the fact that (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was found in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "of course there might be some shipments that were unnoticed."

The security ministry validated that cocaine was not found in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was unable to separately confirm that.

Once a rival to Milei as the governmental candidate for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal activity, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the least expensive in a minimum of the last years and below almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, championsleage.review the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

"We chose to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, larsaluarna.se adding that cooperation between the nationwide and local governments in Rosario had been a key element, along with the courts taking a tougher line. The government has actually also targeted drug currently behind bars.

"We took away the power that the drug employers had in the jails, who utilized the jails to keep their drug crime rings going. We isolated them," she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence expert and president of local think tank CRIES, credited a focus on gathering intelligence with aiding the crime reduction.

"There was a collective security effort by the nationwide federal government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence instead of just having more police on the streets, which is a far more practical strategy," he said.

Bullrich has sent out a costs to congress to establish a brand-new anti-mafia law, comparable to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has likewise gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

Last year, she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of thousands of gang members in difficult conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually shown rows of tattooed and topless inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

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

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing sees to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and increasing 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 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 recently," she said.

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

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not instantly react to an ask for comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently invited the idea of reinforcing border security in a reaction to the measures.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei key center-ground assistance, gratisafhalen.be said she had actually been won over to the libertarian's more comprehensive financial and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have divided Argentines but assisted stabilize the country.

The 2 are former rivals. 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 actually shot back that the former economic pundit was emotionally 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