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Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she states

Murders in Rosario center most affordable in at least a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, lespoetesbizarres.free.fr is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have actually driven increasing violence and caused a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is prospering.

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

Bullrich, in an unusual interview with international media, told Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and from making their method to end markets, including to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened in current years.

"We've had record cocaine seizures which's produced fantastic respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was detected in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, including that "of course there might be some shipments that were unnoticed."

The security ministry verified 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 independently validate that.

Once a rival to Milei as the presidential prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal offense, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using synthetic intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 - the most affordable in at least the last decade and down from almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

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

"We eliminated the power that the drug employers had in the jails, who utilized the jails to keep their drug criminal offense rings going. We isolated them," she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence professional and president of local think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on event intelligence with aiding the crime decrease.

"There was a collective security effort by the nationwide government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence instead of just having more cops on the streets, which is a a lot more practical method," 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 actually also gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

In 2015, she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of countless gang members in hard conditions that have actually drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have shown rows of tattooed and partially nude prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

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

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing visits to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and enhancing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being reinforced, including by constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "lack of control recently," she said.

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

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

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

The two are previous competitors. 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 actually shot back that the previous economic expert was mentally unstable.

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he looks for to gain seats in legislative 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)