crime

Cartels revive sea routes

Narcotics authorities said cartels are using 20 new sea routes through Panama with gateway cities in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

LAP RENSA

if by sea: Police have seized a total of 22.8 tons of cocaine so far this year, much of which has been smuggled into the country via fishing boats and submersibles.1092796

Anti-narcotics authorities have had an unusually busy season so far this year. On June 21, police intercepted a shipment of three tons of cocaine in Petaquilla, in the province of Colón. Six days later, another ton and a half was seized on the other side of the isthmus, in Chiriquí. Before the ink had dried on that report, police officers had stumbled on a thousand-pound bundle in Las Cumbres, nearly three tons in the neighborhood of Bethania, and a phone call tip led to a bust of three more tons on a beach in Northern Coclé. All of this occurred in less than a month’s time.

Some of the country’s narcotics experts have viewed this series of events as irrefutable evidence that international drug cartels are reviving old trafficking networks in Panama in an effort to expand their sea and land capabilities.

Others, such as leading drug prosecutor José Abel Almengor, claim that although the data is worrying, the 22.8 tons of cocaine seized during the first six months of this year remains well below the 66.9 tons confiscated in 2007.

Almengor conceded that the drug cartels are becoming at once increasingly savvy and brazen in how they transport their illicit cargo through the country, using everything from pedestrians, buses and boats, to sophisticated maritime vessels, such as the mini-submarine that turned up on the banks of the Canal in May, with 35 tons of cocaine and a three-man crew from Cyprus.

Though the routes taken through the country are constantly shifting, reports from the Fiscalía de Drogas indicate that drug traffickers have shown a preference for two major sea routes ideal for conveying shipments to Mexico and the United States.

The first is via the Atlantic. Small boats leave the border town of Jurado, Colombia, pass through the Golfo de Darién in Panamanian waters, to Puerto Limón, near the border with Costa Rica.

The Pacific trajectory begins in the port of Buenaventura, Colombia, cuts through the Islas Perlas in the Golfo de Panamá, before ending landing in Golfito, Costa Rica.

DEA reports contain information describing at least another 20 new sea routes with gateway cities in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, half of which are used by a combination of submersibles and a series of small vessels that often masquerade as fishing boats.

Despite the efforts of local and international authorities to step up enforcement on land and by sea, sources from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) acknowledged that the drugs intercepted each year within Panama represent only about 20 to 25 percent of those moving through the country. According to those calculations, drug traffickers have likely smuggled some 77 tons of cocaine through the isthmus.