In the last two years the business of smuggling high-purity cocaine hidden in parcels has grown to extraordinary power and found a place at the podium of the Argentine drug trade, along with street traffic lords and exporters in Buenos Aires and Rosario, who ship hundreds of kilograms in containers to Europe through points such as the port of Zarate.
The amounts that go by mail are, of course, much smaller. It is rare for a shipment to exceed a kilo. Nevertheless, dust cleanliness that you see in these packages is the largest on the market. Ignacio Actis Caporale, nicknamed “Ojito,” was a Rosario with an impressive escape history. was arrested late last month trying to smuggle a kilogram of 91 percent pure cocaine into Spain, hidden in the false bottom of a beer keg that was going to be shipped by DHL. Customs detected the drug thanks to its scanners, which froze the plan.
But it’s not just about premium powder. It is also about sending the illegal product to the other side of the world, where it can fetch ten times its price and more. There are points like Australia, where a kilogram can cost 270 thousand dollars, the most expensive kilogram in the world. In all of 2022, according to official figures, Argentina’s customs service seized another 15 shipments of at least 22.4 kg, hidden in courier or postal items in very creative ways: book covers and back covers, plastic accessory handles and double bottoms of picture frames, embedded in clothing or even inside a water heater. in September 2021 Lin Lienga late-night businessman from the Chinese community who was involved in prostitution and meth pipes in karaoke bars in the cases against him; Arrested for sending powder to Reservoir and Melbourne, which was hidden in a radiator.
A new Customs report today, accessed by Infobae, reveals the rest of the cocaine map. Throughout 2022 and so far in 2023, customs have been seized 35 shipments to Africa and Asia with almost 36 kilos hidden from courier companies and in packages by the Argentine Postal Service. Argentine traffickers already dare to send drugs to such places Hong Kong, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Laos, Pakistan, Zambia, Syria, India, Turkey and Chinawhere? Penalties for drug offenses are particularly severe.
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Mechanisms are usually very imaginative as well. These 35 seized shipments included drug-laced children’s storybooks and cocaine soaked in chomba necks sports. Five shipments destined for China, Hong Kong and Japan between May and July 2022 were contaminated with this latest trick. Both shipments to China they reached almost four kiloscourage in terms of selling drugs.
The most repeated destination in official statistics is together with Australia Hong Kong, with ten courier deliveries made last year. Smuggling cocaine into that country is a small constant in Argentina’s crime scene. There are two historical cases in this regard Jorge Reboreda and Juan Amarilla, who were eventually sentenced to more than 17 years in prison; for transporting quantities barely exceeding three kilograms, two facts dating back to early 2013. Their stories are somewhat closed. Two weeks ago, at the end of March, The Buenos Aires court sentenced the Argentine to four years and nine months in prison for participating in the two military exercises.
In October 2022, Marcelo H., born in Lima, Peru, was sentenced to three years in prison, which was suspended last October, for shipping one and a half kilograms to China and Hong Kong in 2020. The trick in the book was used childishly again. Marcelo didn’t seem like a drug lord. He had all sorts of simple names. He was eventually convicted in the No. 3 Verbal Economic Criminal Court, mainly. because he put his name and Ramos Mejia’s address on both shipments.
The name of the man from Rosario who was convicted of being part of the cases that ended with a 17-year prison sentence in Hong Kong. doesn’t ring a bell the authorities used to persecute the big drug dealers. So who’s playing here? Who ships the cocaine to the other side of the world?
The authorities and the cases uncovered by Infobae reveal that this is a completely different logic from the logic of the rest of the drug business. We are not talking about big bosses, but small and medium-sized self-employed people. There is no large file yet on this type of maneuver. It’s the prestanombres who usually end up convicted. Economic criminal courts in Buenos Aires have a long list of convictions of Nigerian men who lived on pensions and who fell for shipping to Asia.
In April last year, two shipments to Malaysia and three to Thailand were seized, with nearly seven kilograms. At the end of last November, a victim of gender-based violence, a woman from Villa 1-11-14, a single mother, who was begging for food in canteens. He was sentenced to three years in prison conditionally by Economic Criminal Court No. 1 sent in a number of packages of drugs Malaysia and Thailand were discovered in 2021.
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