Liberia has shown drug cartels that handing a government official in West Africa a bag of money does not always guarantee an easy transit point for cocaine to Europe and the US, a drug expert said.
Instead they used this scenario to stage what the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) terms its most complex and lengthy undercover operation in Africa.
And in so doing they smashed a plot to transit over US$100 million of cocaine through Liberia: a plot which, according to court documents, implicated the Colombians rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC).
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared in a statement “Liberia is officially closed for business to the narcotics trade” and the west African nation drew kudos at home and abroad for its role in Operation Relentless.
TWO-YEAR STING
The two-year sting led to the arrest of eight people this week and involved the President’s son as an undercover mole.
Russell Benson, DEA regional director for Europe and Africa, said on Wednesday that Liberia had proved the often troubled region was not necessarily an easy target.
“Instead of accepting a bag full of money, they decided we are going to fight them and decided to enforce the rule of law,” he said.
Liberia approached the DEA in 2007 when drug traffickers tried to bribe high-level officials, including the president’s son Fumbah Sirleaf, who heads the country’s national security agency.
“We have seen very significant drug traffickers try to corrupt officials at the highest level to gain what they need to gain, access to a private airport to fly in private planes laden with cocaine, or a sea point,” Benson said. “They have been able to successfully do it before. In this case we utilized that scenario and used it against them.”
In the past decade, cocaine has increasingly been trafficked from Colombia and Venezuela through West African countries such as Guinea-Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone, Togo, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia.
“Several of these countries have undergone very dramatic issues and problems as a result of this cocaine trafficking ... there isn’t one country on that west coast that hasn’t been touched in a very negative way,” Benson said.
Liberian Information Minister Norris Tweh said the government was “proud of the job well done” by Fumbah Sirleaf.
The suspects include a host of prolific drug traffickers including a Russian pilot, a Nigerian who has served long sentences in the US for heroin trafficking, and a Ghanaian with extensive knowledge of maritime navigation.
GOING TO AMERICA
Five defendants have already been transferred to the US to be charged; two are on their way and one, arrested in Spain, remains in custody there.
This is the first time in 30 years Liberia has transferred suspects to the US on drug-related charges, the DEA said in a statement.
According to the indictment, the charges involve planned shipments of cocaine — one at 4,000kg with a retail value of US$100 million, and two more that totaled 2,000kg, it said.
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