The arrests of Guatemala’s drug czar and national police chief underscore how deeply the world’s multibillion-dollar drug industry can corrupt small countries with weak institutions — a trend that threatens global security, US President Barack Obama’s administration warned on Wednesday.
As US-funded wars pressure cartels in Mexico and Colombia, drug gangs are increasingly infiltrating vulnerable countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa. Drug profits total about US$394 billion a year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime — dwarfing the GDP of many nations and making them easy prey for cartels.
“Violent traffickers are relocating to take advantage of these permissive environments and importing their own brand of justice,” the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) intelligence chief Anthony Placido said on Wednesday in testimony before a US House subcommittee.
Areas with limited or poor governance become breeding grounds for other types of crime, Placido said, adding that 18 of 44 designated terrorist groups also have links to the international drug trade.
Few countries exemplify the corruption more than Guatemala, where the government’s drug czar and the national police chief were arrested on Tuesday as the alleged leaders of a gang of police who stole more than 680.4kg of cocaine from traffickers. Nelly Bonilla and National Police Chief Baltazar Gomez were the latest in a string of top law enforcement officials jailed for drug-related corruption in recent years.
“That the national police chief from 2009 is in jail and now the national police chief from 2010 is also in jail is certainly not good news. It gives an idea of an institution gravely infiltrated by criminal networks and shaken by corruption,” said Carlos Castresana, the top investigator of a UN investigative commission that helped build the case against Bonilla and Gomez.
The latest embarrassment for Guatemala’s US-funded drug war came only days before the arrival of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who made a five-day tour of Latin America last week.
Clinton will make clear that the Obama administration wants Latin American countries to do more to root out corruption.
“A number of them are not taking strong enough stands against the erosion of the rule of law because of the pressure from drug traffickers,” Clinton told reporters during her trip.
It’s a weakness powerful criminal networks know well. Mexican cartels are under pressure in their own country, with the military and police killing or arresting three drug lords in just the past few months. They have increasingly moved their operations south of the border — turning Guatemala into a major transit country for US-bound cocaine.
In Peru, the world’s No. 2 cocaine-producing country after Colombia, Mexican traffickers have bribed customs officials at airports and seaports.
In Argentina, court papers say Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel has exploited its lax financial oversight and plodding judiciary to set up shell companies that import banned chemicals used to make methamphetamine.
Former Suriname dictator Desi Bouterse, who was convicted in absentia in the Netherlands of drug smuggling, remains free and one of that country’s most powerful politicians. A former justice minister is now serving a year in prison after being convicted of laundering drug money while in office.
The problem extends all the way to Africa, where cocaine-laden planes from Latin America land at airports in small countries with total impunity and often the help of local officials. From there, the drugs have been sent to Europe in diplomatic pouches — the logistics arranged in presidential VIP salons.
Guatemala is one of the only countries in the world where the UN investigates government officials involved in organized crime.
The UN created the independent International Commission Against Impunity in 2007 at the request of Guatemalan authorities overwhelmed by the scope of the problem.
Even with UN help, Guatemala still has been unable to control the situation.
In August, the national police chief was arrested for allegedly stealing US$300,000 from traffickers. In 2007, three Salvadorean congressmen visiting Guatemala were kidnapped and burned to death by detectives linked to a local drug gang. In 2005, then-drug czar Adan Castillo was caught on tape accepting a US$25,000 bribe from a DEA informant in exchange for protecting US-bound cocaine shipments. He was arrested in Virginia after being invited by the DEA to an anti-narcotics course.
Investigators discovered the latest alleged scam by Bonilla and Gomez when gangsters ambushed police agents trying to steal 350kg of cocaine from a warehouse outside Guatemala City last year. Five officers died in the gunbattle.
Castresana said authorities became suspicious of the slain officers after learning anti-narcotics agents blocked federal prosecutors from the crime scene. The national police also did not open an investigation into their deaths.
Bonilla and Gomez deny the accusations. Bonilla said her arrest was orchestrated by cartels, but she stopped short of saying they control the government.
“I have enemies and I was in their way. I was working for God and the law by going after drug traffickers, and this is a nice way to get rid of us,” she said shortly after being detained.
Former interior minister Raul Velasquez said gangs plotted his removal after he was fired by President Alvaro Colom for alleged irregularities in a government contract. He has not been charged.
“This cartel, whose name I’m not saying, celebrated my dismissal. They said that it had cost them a lot of money getting me removed from office and that it was going to be cheaper than having me killed,” Velasquez told local newspaper Siglo XXI.
Ronaldo Robles, presidential spokesman, called the claims absurd.
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