Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for January 2017

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Argentina to stop foreigners with criminal records from entering the country

Op-ed in Spain’s El País:

Argentina adopts anti-immigrant rhetoric over public safety fears. Macri administration pledges to stop foreigners with criminal records from entering the country

Argentina’s foreign population is 4.5%, and foreign inmates serving time represent 6% of the prison population. The figures do not look alarming. Yet the government is providing another set of data that focuses on federal penitentiaries, and points to foreigners as being responsible for the most serious crimes, particularly drug trafficking.

“The foreign national population in the custody of the Federal Penitentiary Service has grown over the last years to reach 21.35% of the total prison population in 2016. In crimes linked to drugs, 33% of the people in the custody of the Federal Penitentiary Service are foreigners.”

The op-ed talks of Argentina as an open country. It does not mention that the drug cartels have taken notice.

Last year the WSJ reported that Argentina is becoming an international narcotics hub as cocaine traffickers have been flying south into Argentina from Bolivia:

Argentina doesn’t produce cocaine, but its porous borders, roads, rivers and ports make it a good transit point. Low chances of prosecution also attract drug dealers, says Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s security minister.

Since 1999, Argentina has successfully prosecuted only seven money-laundering cases, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest international narcotics report. That record has inspired traffickers from Colombia, Peru and Mexico to buy luxury homes and farmland—which can accommodate clandestine airstrips—to evade tougher controls farther north in South America and secure profitable southern supply routes, officials say.

As you may recall, back in 2008 I posted on how Mexican drug cartels can use Argentina as an entry (ephedrine/pseudoephedrine) and exit (cocaine) point, as the country became a hub for U.S. methamphetamine and European cocaine. By 2013, Argentina was believed to supply 70 tons of cocaine a year to Europe, a third of its annual consumption.



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Brazil: PCC hiring FARC

The stuff gets real: Brazil’s largest criminal organization, the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital – First Capital Command) is recruiting Colombian FARC members (emphasis added),

as it seeks heavy-weapons and other expertise to help expand its hold over Latin America’s drug trade, investigators and officials in both countries say.

Defense and foreign ministry officials from both nations are scheduled to meet Tuesday in the city of Manaus in the Amazon region to share information on how the Brazilian criminal organization, the First Capital Command or PCC, is working to hire guerrillas in Colombia, some of whom opted not to participate in peace talks in that country. Colombia’s government last year signed a peace pact with the Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and most of its 6,000 fighters are now preparing to disarm.

The PCC wants to fight the Brazilian military, wipe out competition from other gangs, and deal directly with Colombian cocaine suppliers – whose coca production surged by 46% from 2014 to 2015.

The gang is seeking .50-caliber machine guns, which are capable of taking down helicopters and perforating bulletproof cars, as well as to enlist parts of the FARC’s network of seasoned fighters and expert bomb makers

Additionally, InSight Crime reports that the PCC is using Uruguay as a transit point for international drug trafficking operations in Africa and Europe, and operating in Paraguay and Bolivia. InSight Crime has noted that

PCC is capable of organizing drug trafficking operations and sending drug shipments abroad, as well as controlling shipments of marijuana and cocaine in both national and regional markets.

Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia (which handles up to 80 percent of Italy-bound cocaine) is one of the PCC’s European partners.

Last week the Colombian government and the FARC announced a joint plan to fight against coca production.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Brazil: Eike Batista arrested

Eike Batista, who once was Brazil’s richest man, was arrested after returning from New York (emphasis added),

The entrepreneur, who for a brief period was Brazil´s richest man, is accused of paying $16.5 million in bribes to the former governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Sérgio Cabral, according to a police spokesman. The alleged payments were made from 2007 to 2014, while Mr. Cabral was in office, according to police officials.
. . .
Mr. Batista and his lawyer, Fernando Martins, said the businessman left Brazil for business reasons Tuesday night, two days after police sought to arrest him, and didn’t know an arrest warrant was about to be issued.

Batista is in deep trouble; in addition to the above mentioned bribery charges,

Brazilian prosecutors said in September that Mr. Batista paid bribes of $2.35 million to the presidential campaign of former President Dilma Rousseff in 2010. The prosecutors, who are leading Brazil’s so-called Operation Car Wash investigation centered on embezzlement at state oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, said Mr. Batista came forward in June to offer them the information.

Prosecutors filed no charges against Mr. Batista at the time and said they were investigating the alleged payment.

Mr. Batista also was indicted for financial crimes related to the failure of OGX, the oil company he created, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013.

O Globo (link in Portuguese) reports that Batista negotiated with federal authorities the terms for his return, since they regarded him as a fugitive. However, according to O Globo, the authorities did not make a formal request to the U.S. for Batista’s arrest.

Sometime between his departure and return to and from NYC, Batista shaved his head, which has caused quite a buzz in Brazil,

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NYT, WaPo want sob stories

Scott Johnson and Paul Mirengoff post that The Former Newspaper and the WaPo are canvassing their readers

In what might be described as the journalism equivalent of ambulance chasing

for stories on

how their lives have been ruined by President Trump’s executive order on immigration.

Where were the NYT & the WaPo on Obama’s immigration record? (emphasis added)

Obama went from soliciting Latino votes in the 2008 election by promising to tackle immigration reform in his first 100 days to never getting around to crafting a remedy for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

And he went from criticizing the George W. Bush administration for sending federal agents to arrest nursing mothers who were “torn from their babies” to essentially deputizing, through Secure Communities, thousands of local and state police officers to enforce federal immigration law by checking the immigration status of anyone with whom they came in contact.

In recent weeks, the same person who – in August 2010 – signed a $600 million border security bill proposed by Senate Democrats that put more agents, fencing and equipment on the U.S.-Mexico border expressed worry about his successor’s plan to build a border wall.

It’s surreal to hear Obama and other Democrats express their indignation at the idea that people could be deported and families separated when, for the past eight years, this has been standard operating procedure for the Obama administration and the party that covered up for it.

There needs to be an honest and serious accounting of Obama’s cynical and cruel immigration record.

And yet we can’t very well expect the media to provide it

And to all of you hypocrites protesting at the airports,

the countries whose citizens are barred entirely from entering the United States is based on a bill that Obama [*] signed into law in December 2015.

Obama signed the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act as part of an omnibus spending bill.

Where were you then?

Related:
Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration – the full text

UPDATED
[*] The seven countries – Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria – were designated as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals under Pres. Obama

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Ft. Lauderdale shooter indicted on 22 charges

Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter Esteban Santiago has been Officially Charged in Case

The 26-year-old faces two charges each for the five people killed during the incident near the baggage claim of Terminal 2. Santiago also faces two counts each for the six people wounded in the shooting.

Santiago is due back in court Monday, where he will enter a plea on all charges. He confessed to planning the shooting following interrogation from officials with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, FBI and other agencies, authorities said.

As you may recall, Santiago allegedly Converted to Islam, Identified as Aashiq Hammad Years Before Joining Army, according to Judicial Watch’s investigation.

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Mexico: Peña Nieto and the Juarez cartel

In the flurry of news and criticism over the cancelled Peña Nieto visit, Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby remind us that the Juarez Cartel used shell companies to finance Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign; their article from March last year explains how,

The bombshell revelation was made this week by the independent news outlet Aristegui Noticias who claim that top officials of the Juarez Cartel financed thousands of cash cards that were handed out by Mexico’s Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) during the 2012 political campaign that resulted in the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto. According to the Mexican journalists, the cash cards were provided by a company called Monex. They were reported to be financed through a series of shell corporations by key players with the Juarez Cartel.     

Through a three part series, the Mexican news organization identified Rodolfo David “El Consul” Avila Cordero as a key figure in the financial scandal that implicates the leading figures in Mexico’s ruling party the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Avila Cordero was arrested in 2005 in Mexico City in connection with the seizure of almost $750,000 in cash. At the time authorities had identified him as a top tier operative with the Juarez (Carrillo Fuente) Cartel who worked as their financial operator an a key figure in their connections with Colombian drug lords.  Avila Cordero had earned the nickname “The Consul” because of his links to high ranking officials within the Mexican government and acted as an ambassador of sorts, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Eight years after his arrest, Avila Cordero became a contractor for a government funded program called Crusade Against Hunger. Using a company called Conclave SA de CV and Prodasa SA de CV, Cordero was able to secure more than $396 million pesos or $25 million in government contracts through rigged bidding processes by government officials.

The Crusade Against Hunger is a pet project of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto who claimed that with that program he would improve the quality of life for his people.

According to the investigation by the Mexican journalists, Conclave and Prodasa are shell companies that do not have real offices or staff.

Ortiz and Darby posted yesterday that

Mexico’s President Cancels White House Visit After Trump Hits CartelsMexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has cancelled his planned visit to the U.S. where he was expected to meet with President Donald J. Trump. The cancellation comes after Mexico’s government denounced Trump’s new border security measures aimed at interfering with the cash flow of the very Mexican cartels believed to have financed the current Mexican president’s campaign.

There’s room for discussion on whether or not the cancellation is directly related to this.

However, Peña Nieto’s approval ratings last week were at 11%. Every minute the media in the U.S. and in Mexico spend berating Trump and/or what Trump may or may not do is a minute they don’t spend examining the reasons why Mexico’s government has failed – and continues to fail – its own citizens.

Remember also that Peña Nieto’s popularity started its precipitous decline after the 2014 disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. Only the remains of one student have been found.

The Ayotzinapa massacre, not Donald Trump, is emblematic of Mexico’s failures.

Related:
Southern exposure: The costly border plan Mexico won’t discuss

UPDATE
Linked to by Maggie’s Farm. Thank you!

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