Transnational Threats

On November 4, agents of the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) and the Brazilian Federal Revenue made the largest seizure of drugs ever recorded in Pará state, and one of the largest in Brazilian ports. The operation took place in the Port of Vila do Conde, in Barcarena, where authorities seized [ … ]

The Colombian Public Force is not letting up its fight against narcotrafficking, achieving increasingly blunt results. As such, in late October, authorities destroyed 71 illegal laboratories that belonged to narcotrafficking organizations operating in the Colombian Amazon region, the Colombian Navy said in a statement. The labs, located in the departments [ … ]

Firearms trafficking is one of the main drivers of the Caribbean’s soaring violence, with Haiti reaching a breaking point. The country not only currently faces a catastrophic humanitarian situation and gang-related violence, but also a firearms crisis created and fueled by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) operating in and around Haiti [ … ]

 Colombia’s gold mining industry has historically been rife with criminality, creating an immense black market for the precious metal. Criminal organizations including the National Liberation Army (ELN), dissident groups of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and other criminal gangs exploit Colombia’s large gold reserves, financing multiple criminal [ … ]

Argentina’s security forces dealt successive blows to narcotrafficking between September and October, with the cooperation of countries of the region.   One of the most important blows occurred on October 28, when agents of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) and the Peruvian National Police (PNP) captured Raúl Martín Maylli Rivera, alias [ … ]

The Colombian Army dismantled two narco laboratories on the Pacific coast of Colombia during an operation carried out in mid-October. One of the labs was among the largest found in 2022, the institution said. Army troops belonging to the Command Against Drug Trafficking and Transnational Threats (CONAT) led the operation, [ … ]

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Living Planet 2022 report, Latin America, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, lost 94 percent of its vertebrate groups in the last 50 years. The October assessment looked at nearly 32,000 populations of 5,230 species of amphibians, birds, mammals, fish, [ … ]

Uruguayan authorities have been paying close attention to the operations of transnational criminal organizations that move drugs to Europe from the Port of Montevideo, the South American country’s main maritime terminal, where significant cocaine shipments have been seized since 2019. “The Uruguayan port terminal is strategic for transnational organized crime,” [ … ]

On October 24, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Nicaraguan Ministry of Energy and Mines’ (MEME) General Directorate of Mines (DGM), which the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime use to finance its authoritarian and destabilizing activities, the Treasury said in a statement. The sanctions come under a new Executive [ … ]

In two mid-October operations, the Colombian Navy, with the support of U.S., Costa Rican, and Mexican forces, dealt a hard blow to transnational narcotrafficking organizations by seizing 3.7 tons of cocaine off the Pacific coast of Central America, the naval institution said in a statement. [caption id="attachment_78200" align="alignright" width="300"] The [ … ]

On October 12, the Colombian Navy, the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, and the National Police captured 15 narcotraffickers who were the backbone of a criminal network that shipped tons of cocaine hydrochloride from the Colombian Caribbean coast to Central America and Europe, the Colombian Navy said in a statement. During [ … ]