Archive for the ‘Coca’ Category
Friday, February 8th, 2008
The inspector general of the National Police is removing 120 police officers from the Apurímac and Ene river valleys, VRAE, where about 30 percent of Peru’s coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine, is harvested.
Sixty of the officers are suspected of drug trafficking while another 27 are accused of corruption, daily La Republic quoted Inspector General Luis Henríquez Palacios saying. The other 33 officers are being removed because they were stationed in the VRAE for five to eight years, while regulations permit cycles of no more than three years in the area.
Henríquez told La República the 60 officers are suspected of using police weapons during their days off to seize cocaine from drug traffickers and resell it to competing cartels. The officers have reportedly been transferred to other posts pending an investigation. (more…)
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Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
The head of Peru’s anti-narcotics unit, General Miguel Hidalgo, announced that they will begin preliminary investigations into 124 companies and some 77 people suspected of money laundering. The investigation surrounds the Sánchez Paredes family, which is suspected of using the companies to hide decades-old profits from drug trafficking.
According to Agencia Andina, the investigations will include the Sánchez Paredes siblings: Santos Orlando, Amanda Francisca, Segundo Manuel, Fortunato Wilmer and Blanca Azucena as well as their mother, Marcelina Príncipe.
Police suspect the Sánchez Paredes family has been involved in the drug trade since 1976, supplying cocaine to Mexican and Colombian cartels, including the Medellín cartel, which was ruled by Colombia’s former drug baron, Pablo Escobar.
“We are looking for a sharp investigation with testimonies, expertise, evidence and corresponding surveys,” said Hidalgo. “When finished we’ll have an impeccable report that will allow the judiciary to press charges accordingly.” (more…)
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Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
A family of coca growers who had replaced their illicit yield for legal alternative crops was brutally executed Sunday morning in Peru’s eastern jungle province of Padre Abad, in Ucayali Department. The mayor of a local community told Radio Programas radio the crime was in retaliation for the family’s support of a State program that encourages farmers to voluntarily eradicate their coca plantations.
One of the victims, 30-year-old Aniceto Cámara, received death threats the day before the attack because of his involvement in the eradication program, Agencia Andina reported. The other victims include Cámara’s wife, 28-year-old Césarea Polino, and their three children aged 10, seven and one. Cámara’s younger brother, 25-year-old Inocencio Cámara, was also killed.
Radio Programas reported that the adults were tied up and shot with shotguns and revolvers and that the children were hacked to death with machetes.
Cabinet Chief Jorge Del Castillo told Agencia Andina, “this murder shows the ferocity at the criminal hands of drug traffickers, who … kill those who want to change to a lawful economy.” (more…)
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
The police chief from the city of La Mar, capital of San Miguel province in Ayacucho department, was arrested Sunday night after he was allegedly caught transporting 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds, of cocaine paste. According to daily La República, Captain Pedro Guzmán Ayma had wrapped the paste in 59 packages and hid it in a box in his police vehicle. An AKM rifle and numerous pistols were also seized.
Guzmán and three accomplices were reportedly about 10 kilometers, or about 6 miles, outside of Ayacucho when police officers confronted them. Guzmán opened fire on the police, causing a shootout that left one of his accomplices, a known drug trafficker, injured, local media reported.
The men were allegedly traveling to Ayacucho from the Apurímac and Ene river valleys, VRAE, where more than 30 percent of Peru’s coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, is cultivated, according to the 2007 UN World Drug Report. The UN report added that the 2006 farm-gate value of cocaine paste was $879 per kilogram in Colombia, where much of the Peruvian paste is sent and manufactured into cocaine. (more…)
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
A survey conducted by the National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs, Devida, and the Lima-based Calandria Institute, shows that a majority of people in four of Peru’s coca growing departments acknowledge that the leaf’s primary function is to fuel the cocaine trade.
The survey was conducted in December 2007 in the Ayacucho, Huanuco, San Martín and Ucayali departments and published Monday in Peru’s main daily newspaper, El Comercio. Four hundred people from each department were interviewed.
The survey found that 63.5 percent of the people recognize the main use of the coca leaf was for cocaine, while 66 percent confirm that drug traffickers use extortion and threaten coca growers, known as cocaleros, in order to increase coca leaf production.
The majority of the population is aware of social problems associated with the cocas illegal cultivation and the presence of drug traffickers, the study showed. Forty-two percent of those surveyed say crime, theft, and extortion are the main problems from illegal coca cultivation while 59.8 percent say the increase in crime is the main problem from drug trafficking.
More than 80 percent of the population confirmed that adolescents are the main drug runners used by traffickers from the Peruvian jungle to the coast. (more…)
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Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Peru police have reportedly seized 800 kilograms, or about 1,760 pounds, of coca leaves in La Convención province, in Cusco department.
According to Agencia Andina, the leaves were confiscated during operations along the highway between Cusco and Quillabamba between Dec. 23 and Dec. 26. Police allegedly found the leaves hidden among luggage and crates of fruit in different buses and cargo trucks. Authorities believe they were destined for cocaine production. No one has been arrested.
The coca leaf has a significant role in Andean culture, but it is also the raw material for manufacturing cocaine. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Peru’s dry coca leaf production potential in 2006 was 105,100 metric tons, making it the world’s second largest producer of dry coca leaf after Colombia.
Chemical products used to manufacture the coca leaf into cocaine have also been recently seized by Police. About 15 tons of calcium hydroxide was confiscated from a 42-year-old man on a highway in Junín department on Tuesday. According to Agencia Andina, the man claimed to be delivering it to a Buenaventura mine. However police became suspicious when he lacked proper transportation documents.
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Monday, December 24th, 2007
Peru police have begun a search for gunmen who ambushed a police patrol this morning. About 20 to 30 people armed with grenades and machine guns ambushed the patrol in Huanta province, in Ayacucho Department, killing officers Alberto Quispe Argumedo and Julio César Solano Cipriano and injuring officer Elías Pahuacho Córdova.
The director of the National Police, David Rodríguez, told Agencia Andina the ambush occurred when officers stopped a truck about three miles from the town of Luricocha.
According to CNR radio, the truck was traveling to the town of Huanta from the Apurímac and Ene river valleys, VRAE, where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates some 30 percent of Peru’s coca is cultivated, the raw material used to make cocaine.
“We know that it is an area where drug trafficking is being fought,” said Rodríguez. “The investigations will have to advance before we know if they were traffickers or common criminals.”
This is the third attack on police in less than two months. About 70 to 80 guerrillas brazenly attacked a remote police outpost in Apurímac department in early November, killing one police officer. Two weeks later, four more officers were killed in an ambush in Huancavelica department. Both attacks were attributed to remnants of the Shining Path insurgency now employed by drug traffickers.
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Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
Members of Peru’s anti drug police, DIRANDRO, seized a planeload of cocaine and firearms in the southern Madre de Dios department. Officials have not released the amount of the cocaine seized or the name of the Colombian man arrested in the operation. But according to Interior Minister Luis Alva Castro, the operation was “a big blow to international drug trafficking.”
“It was an impeccable operation headed by DIRANDRO. We didn’t let him leave with the drugs. The plane is in Madre de Dios in perfect condition. The Colombian man will bring new light and new information,” said Alva in a Radio Programas radio interview. (more…)
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Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
Interior Minister Luis Alva Castro rejected claims that a new insurgency is responsible for the attack on an Ocobamba police station in Peru’s southern Apurímac department. “The existence of a new terrorist group is pure speculation,” he told daily Peru.21. “The intelligence services have rejected this possibility.”
Officers at the station said 70 to 80 people attacked them on November 1, killing police Lt. Colonel Héctor Zegarra, and wounding three others. Authorities maintained the attack was orchestrated by drug traffickers trying to recuperate 180 pounds of cocaine paste confiscated days earlier. (more…)
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