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“Holland is at the centre of Europe’s cocaine routes. This is largely thanks to the Port of Rotterdam and the proximity of Germany. The Netherlands is also a favourite place for the criminals to invest their illicit profits or to go to ground. It’s not like they’re in the country just to traffick cocaine. They also need to do their money laundering.”
The lands of the Caribbean archipelago are in crisis, perhaps their worst ever, a condition that stands in stark contrast to thriving South America. The Caribbean economies have been unable to find a niche in a globalized world economy. Jamaica’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 130 per cent, one of the highest, and its unemployment rate is 14.5 per cent. Even Puerto Rico, once the most prosperous of all islands, is bankrupt.
Since its inception, the Caribbean has been the most globalized region in the developing world — in terms of the powers that made it, the populations that formed it and its integration into the world economy as “King Sugar” financed several European empires. After independence, the islands latched onto special access and privileges in the markets of the old and new colonial powers.
Yet with globalization and liberalization, these privileges evaporated (the banana regime with the EU comes to mind; tax havens may be next), and Caribbean nations have been left holding the bag. Even tourism, hailed as the region’s last best hope, is succumbing to global trends. As the airfare share of a travel package gets lower, a Thai vacation can be cheaper than a Jamaican one.
Globalization embraces some and tosses out others. The Caribbean is being tossed out.
At least two tonnes of cocaine with a street value estimated at $1bn has been seized in The Gambia, bound for Europe
Police at Entebbe International Airport said Monday that they are worried about the increasing number of drug traffickers from the region and other parts of the world using Entebbe airport as their conduit.
The impoverished nation of the Gambia is gradually becoming a safe-haven for drug cartel networks—notably drug dealers from South America, Guinea Bissau, and the country’s indigenous local citizens who used the West African country to traffic cocaine and other dangerous drugs, the Freedom Newspaper can report
“Broadly speaking, the conflict of interest exists between the seven upstream and two downstream nations. Egypt and Sudan want to maintain the status quo of the monopoly of the utilisation of the Nile waters as per the agreements of colonial powers of the 1929 and 59, while the seven upstream nations insist on equitable utilisation of the water resources,” Dr. Yacob added.
The upstream countries want to be able to implement irrigation and hydro-power projects in consultation with Egypt and Sudan, but without Egypt being able to exercise the veto power it was given by a 1929 colonial-era treaty with Britain.
The mafia’s waste disposal and illegal dumping business in Italy continued to flourish in 2009, defying the global economy’s woes, environmental organisation Legambiente said on Friday.
Illicit flows have been a consistent and crippling problem in African countries. The Global Financial Integrity study found that illicit funds from the continent have continued to ratchet upwards every decade since the 1970s at an average rate of 12 per cent per year. In fact, Africa is a net creditor to the world – it ‘gives’ back to the world through illicit capital flight at least twice, and in some regions thrice, the amount of capital it receives in external assistance. No wonder, then, that this staggering loss of capital seriously hampers Africa's efforts at poverty alleviation and economic development, decade after decade.
Guinea Bissau has dropped charges against controversial former navy chief, Rear Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, a notorious drug baron who fled to Gambia after been accused of attempted coup plot in 2008.
Five Dominicans killed for knowing too much about a drug lord. Spiking murder rates in Puerto Rico. Shootings in the normally paradise-like islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Long before Kingston, Jamaica, erupted in violence last week, the Caribbean was already becoming an increasingly dangerous way station for drug traffickers.
With the United States and Mexico working to tighten their border, which is the preferred drug trafficking route, the Caribbean is “re-emerging as a corridor” for South American drugs to get to the U.S., said Dominican security expert Lilian Bobea.
Already the issue of drug trafficking remains a domineering subject in international discourses; and anytime it is raised Guinea Bissau is sure to be mentioned. Its military leaders are in the middle of it. Clearly both Gambia and Senegal are getting their fair share of the problem there - for the former in the form of drug issues and the latter in the form of rebel incursions and probably also drugs.
The Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana's capital, plays as a clearing Portr, a crucial role. Furthermore, the ports of Tema and Sekondi are used. At the border post Aflao (Togo), Elubo and Sampa (Cote d'Ivoire) plays also from many things. In 2004 alone, in Ghana, approximately 620 tons of cocaine seized 71 tons of heroin and 765 tons of cannabis. The amounts involved are significant.
Some 90 percent of Serbian citizens believe that corruption is a customary occurrence in Serbia.
An increasing amount of cocaine from Latin America is reaching Western Europe through the southeastern part of the continent, according to the EMCDDA data.
Even though the major amount of the Latin American cocaine still goes directly to Western Europe, the counties of Central and Eastern Europe are emerging as a convenient new transit route, according to Laurent Laniel from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, as cited by BGNES.
The cocaine traffickers are said to be using more and more the Balkans where there is already a thick network of channels for all kinds of trafficking – human, drug, or arms.
Possibly the most disturbing social and political reality, one that we cannot seem to deal with, is that this terrible industry has increasingly become the only option for the millions who live in perpetual poverty.
Quite simply, drugs are the only part of our great 21st-century global, free-market society they can get their hands on, like Jamaica’s 21stcenturyRobin Hood.
But growing suspicion that the army operation to capture Christopher 'Dudus' Coke and extradite him to the US turned into a bloodbath of extra-judicial killings is threatening to sweep away public support for the government's attempt to assert control over what has been called a 'state within a state'.
The recent arrest
of a deportee, Ene Patrick, 34, and eight others for allegedly
smuggling about 11.45kg of illegal substances have further confirmed
experts’ worries on the rising cases of drug trafficking in the country.
Rear Admiral Anderson added 'We re starting to see the use of submarines on the West coast of South America. 'The expectation is that if they re successful there they will start to use those more exotic means in other passages.'
