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Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have been blocked, she states

Murders in Rosario hub most affordable in at least a decade

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American nation that have actually driven increasing violence and king-wifi.win led to a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She states she is prospering.

Argentina has actually grown in significance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has flowed down key waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi's hometown. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, fishtanklive.wiki in a rare interview with worldwide media, told Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and blocking shipments from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has expanded in the last few years.

"We have actually had record cocaine seizures which's created terrific respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, due to the fact that (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was identified in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, adding that "naturally there may be some deliveries that were undetected."

The security ministry confirmed that cocaine was not found in any shipments that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was not able to individually verify 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, it-viking.ch privatizing some jails and utilizing synthetic intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to local federal government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - 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 workplace.

"We chose to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation in between the national and local federal governments in Rosario had been a key aspect, as well as the courts taking a harder line. The federal government has actually likewise targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

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

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence specialist and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited a focus on gathering intelligence with aiding the criminal offense reduction.

"There was a concerted security effort by the nationwide federal government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence rather than simply having more cops on the streets, which is a much more feasible strategy," he said.

Bullrich has actually sent out an expense to congress to establish a 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.

In 2015, she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and akropolistravel.com visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of countless 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 partially nude prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has actually been a little bit, let's say, less severe. But when we have to be hard, we are hard," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, planning sees to cocaine-growing areas in Peru, and boosting 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 developing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "absence of control over the last few years," she said.

"We're going to start a program, a strategy, we're taking troops to the border location with Brazil," she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not immediately react to a demand for comment. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently invited the idea of enhancing border security in an action to the measures.

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

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

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he looks for 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; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien)

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