In the last decade, West Africa emerged as a major transit hub for Latin American Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) transporting cocaine to Western Europe. Since that time, there has been cause for hope and despair. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and an array of international donors have made great strides in acknowledging the growing problem of drug trafficking and have implemented practical measures to stem this flow. All the while, the fears of many observers have been confirmed as the insidious effects of the drug trade have begun to take effect in many West African states.

Consumption is on the rise and narco-corruption now undermines the rule of law and legitimate economic growth necessary for development and stability. One of the most alarming trends that place Africa and Africans on the radar of policy makers, law enforcement, and researchers alike is the number of fronts on which the illicit drug trade is growing. Its geographic expansion beyond the relatively confined region of West Africa is now endangering East and Southern Africa. 

The arrival of new drugs to the region--heroin and Amphetamine has been accompanied by the discovery of local manufacturing facilities to process them. The growing level of activity by Africans--who initially served as facilitators but now appear to be taking a more proactive role--raises concerns that a new generation of African DTOs is rising in the ranks.

Globalization,which is the integration of regional economies, societies, and cultures, is considered one of the most significant developments of the 20th century. In addition to multitude of cultural, political, economic, and technological benefits it brings to many fortunate countries, globalization has also brought with it opportunities for the weak,poor,and oppressed to participate in traditionally closed markets. Yet, while globalization has been lauded for fostering free trade and economic prosperity, its so-called dark-side has also created opportunities for criminals,businessmen,institutions and politicians to enrich and empower themselves by taking advantage of lucrative illicit markets, or by creating new ones. The forces of globalization and its causes and effects have been well documented and are largely accepted as having facilitated the expansion of licit as well as illicit markets to regions that otherwise would not have enjoyed significant economic activity.

Africa is the exemplar, whose geographic proximity between the source zone and final markets for many illicit goods has contributed to its exploitation by DTOs.  The emergence of West Africa as a major transit point for Latin American cocaine en route to Europe has taken the international community by surprise. Europe and the United States, in particular, are concerned for many reasons.


















                                                       A good example of narco corruption in Africa is Jackie Selebi, the former South African ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations, former Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, former Chair of Justice crime prevention and security Cluster, winner of human rights award from the International Service for Human Rights and national commissioner of the South African Police Service, and former VP of Interpol,

Selebi was found guilty of corruption,fraud, racketeering and drug trafficking on 2 July 2010 and sentenced to 15 yrs imprisonment on 3 August 2010. However, he was released on medical parole having served just 229 days of his 15 year sentence. in July 2012.                                                                                                                                                                         From Europe's perspective, it is now experiencing increasing levels of cocaine entering its borders from West Africa, at least partly as a result of highly effective counternarcotics strategies that have concentrated law-interdicting drugs on commercial airflights from the Caribbean to Europe (primarily the Netherlands Antilles to Amsterdam and Jamaica to London). This strategy has been so effective at disrupting major trafficking routes and deterring couriers that traffickers have been forced to identify new routes to enter Europe where law enforcement is less likely to detect their shipments. From its experience as both a transit zone and a final market for heroin, Europe is all too familiar with the public health and safety issues associated with addiction, crime, prostitution, and violence that typically accompany drug trade.

From the U.S perspective,it fears the existence of several anti-American terrorist groups operating in Africa coupled with drug revenues that could cultivate a crime-terrorist nexus, thus threatening its interests in yet another region. Furthermore, since the DTOs operating in West Africa are the same ones that traffic drugs into the United States, Americans view the proceeds of these Africa-based operations as bolstering the strength of those DTOs operating on its southern border with Mexico. All parties are concerned with the destabilizing impacts of the drug trade,including its potential to finance local insurgencies,expand into new illicit markets (such as arms), and its under mining effect on programs that improve governance, anti corruption,accountability, and raise public trust in government institutions.
Today these concerns are more relevant than ever, with new drugs, higher quantities, and an ever-increasing number of transit states now characterizing Africa's drug trade. 

Despite regional and international counter-narcotics programs designed to interdict drugs and build the capacity of local law enforcement institutions to detect trafficking activity and prosecute the offenders, the continent appears to be growing in importance to DTOs. Whereas Africa's involvement in the global drug trade before the mid-2000s was generally limited to West African heroin distribution networks, the last several years has witnessed an unrelenting expansion of the drug trade throughout the continent. Cocaine, synthetics, and increasing amounts of heroin are now transiting Africa where some portion of it stays to satisfy the local market, while the remainder is moved to final destinations in Europe and North America. 

Regrettably, the growth of transnational organized crime in Africa is not limited to the drug trade. Trafficking in humans, cigarettes, arms, natural resources (most notably diamond, timber, and minerals), oil, hazardous waste, and most recently, the manufacture and sale of fake pharmaceuticals, are all illicit trades that continue to thrive in Africa. 

A Boeing aircraft from Venezuela landed on an improvised landing strip in Mali’s Gao region, with ten tones of cocaine on board. News reports about aircraft in West Africa loaded with cocaine are becoming more and more frequent. The drugs cartels in Latin America have discovered that they can reach the European market via Africa. Organised crime is such a rewarding industry in Europe because ordinary Europeans spend an ever-burgeoning amount of their spare time and money snorting coke through €50 notes.

In case you think this is a wild exaggeration, take note of an article published by the London Sunday Telegraph. So much cocaine is being used in London that traces of the white powdered narcotic can be detected in the River Thames. Citing scientific research that it had commissioned, it said an estimated 2kg of cocaine, or 80 000 lines, spill into the river every day after passing through users’ bodies and sewage treatment plants.

It extrapolated that 150 000 lines of the illegal drug are snorted in the British capital every single day, or 15 times higher than the official figure given by the Home Office. Europeans belong to the largest consumers of illicit drugs, absorbing about one fifth of the global heroin, cocaine and cannabis supply, as well as one third of ecstasy production (UNODC World Drug report, 2008). 
Between 1998 and 2009 global production of opium rose almost 80% … "Just a decade ago, the North American market for cocaine was four times larger than that of Europe, but now we are witnessing a complete rebalancing. Today the estimated value of the European cocaine market ($65-billion) is almost equivalent to that of the North American market ($70-billion), it has simply experienced a geographical shift in supply and demand.
According to the latest UN World Drug Report, a gram of the white powder fetched just £40 ($62) in Britain in 2010. In
Germany,it cost $87.Only in Portugal and the Netherlands is cocaine cheaper on the street than it is in Britain. Prices have been falling in Britain for years, even as they have increased elsewhere. Cocaine is now half as expensive as it was in 1998, even before accounting for inflation. Curiously, the trend has continued despite rising wholesale prices. 
Since 2007 the price of a kilogram of cocaine at the border has increased from £30,000 to around £55,000.

A big reason for cheap retail prices, say police, is that dealers have discovered cutting agents which allow them to pad their products without losing custom. Cocaine is adulterated before it arrives in Britain, to around 65% purity, most commonly with levamisole, a drug used to treat worms in cattle. Local dealers then cut it with other chemicals such as benzocaine, a local anaesthetic which simulates the numbing effect that real cocaine has on the gums.

Dean Ames, a drugs specialist at LGC Forensics, a private forensic science company, says that the street-level cocaine he analyses has fallen from between 30%to 60% purity in 2007 to between 10% and 35% now. Around two-fifths of samples contain benzocaine.

Drug trafficking, the critical link between supply and demand, is fuelling a global criminal enterprise valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars that poses a growing challenge to stability and security. Drug traffickers and cartels are forming transnational networks, sourcing drugs on one continent, trafficking them across another and marketing them in a third. 

In some countries and regions the value of the illicit drug trade far exceeds the size of the legitimate economy. Given the enormous amounts of money controlled by drug traffickers, they have the capacity to corrupt officials. In recent years we have seen several such cases in which ministers and heads of national law enforcement agencies have been implicated in drug-related corruption. We are also witnessing more and more acts of violence, conflicts and terrorist activities fuelled by drug trafficking and organised crime.

The transporting of narcotics via the west coast of Africa has proven to be the most secure way of getting drugs to customers in Europe. The so-called Atlantic route (South America – Portugal – Spain) is becoming steadily more difficult, so the drugs cartels have turned their attention to West Africa, which has a practically unguarded coastline and impoverished, weak and easy-to-bribe governments.

Waterbed Effect
“The drugs trade, which has Europe as its primary destination, now chooses the African route. Especially the poor, open-to-bribery countries, but also the larger and more stable parts of Africa such as Nigeria and South Africa”, says Wil Pantsers, Director of the Mexican Studies Centre at the University of Groningen.

Every time a country somewhere in the world proudly presents figures showing the progress of the war against drugs trafficking, figures in another part of the world give precisely the opposite impression. The golden rule of supply and demand that defines the marketplace certainly applies to the drugs trade.

Weak States
Forty tonnes (27 percent) of the cocaine consumed in Europe have passed through various West African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia,Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,Cape Verde,Senegal, Mali or Mauritania. The international airports on the other side of the continent serve as through-routes for heroin that is imported from Asia and sold on the streets of Amsterdam or London. That’s according to the annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) of the United Nations.


The rapid growth is not only the consequence of the creativity and vast experience of the Latin American drugs cartels. The weakness of the states with which they do business, and the extreme poverty, makes this region an ideal place for their illegal practices.

Lack of Everything
Guinea-Bissau is a good example of an extremely violent state, where the drugs trade is flourishing at the highest levels of the land. Tom Blickman, from the Transnational Institute of Policy Studies in Amsterdam, points out the extreme weakness of the government: “In Guinea-Bissau there’s no means of keeping drugs trafficking under control. The police don’t have any cars. They don’t have any radios. They don’t have anything.”

Guinea-Bissau Drug Rehab

In the last few years, the Mexican drugs cartels have conquered the international market. 90% of the drugs in the United States come into the country via Mexico. The Mexican drugs cartels, along with that of Colombia, together form an enormous criminal force that reaches far beyond the borders even across oceans.

Corruption
In Mexico, neither the huge army nor the police are in any position to bring an end to the drugs gangs. Since 2008, drug-related violence has so far cost the lives of more than sixty thousand dead and fifteen thousand missing. The drugs trade is even infiltrated by individuals at the highest levels of the police and politics.




























Mexico is an important through-route to the north from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, but at the same time the quantity of marijuana and poppies has increased enormously. What particularly strikes researchers is the spectacular growth in the production of synthetic drugs.

Crossroads
Mexico has developed into the crossroads for drug trafficking, and that is feeding destabilization in the region, says Luis Astorga from the Independent National University of Mexico. “This position that Central America has taken up in the cocaine route, is becoming increasingly important. Every success by Colombia or Mexico in the fight against drugs has immediate negative consequences in the Caribbean and Central America, where the governments are weaker.”

The fight against worldwide drugs trafficking is a major challenge for the international community, maybe even greater than the fight against international terrorism. Drugs’ trafficking brings democracies to their knees, and destabilizes not only countries, but whole regions.

Organized crime and cement often go together, but in Guinea Bissau this happens in an untraditional way. The cement importing and sales company, SOMEC, was salvaged by Colombian Juan Pablo Camacho, a convicted drug trafficker who spent five years in prison in Miami on drug trafficking charges. 

He and his partner, Luis Fernando Ortega Mejia, bought the company that had been ruined in 1998 by Guinea Bissau’s civil war. Camacho and Mejia were both detained in September 2006 in the biggest bust the country had ever seen. The Judiciary Police seized firearms, ammunition, grenades, laptops, 674 kilos of cocaine and $39 million in various currencies. Unusual, for a cement company.











The Colombians, however, were able to walk away. The cocaine and money were stored in the treasury vaults, for safekeeping. The next day, the army seized both the drugs and the cash, and the evidence vanished. No evidence, no case. The Colombians were freed, thanks to Carlos Lopes Correira and Armando Mango, the same lawyers who defended Augusto Bliri.

Camacho denied every accusation and said that his wife and five children, who were still in Bogotá, would soon arrive in Bissau and that he planned to live there for the next few years. The Colombians are said to have left the country since, skipping bail, but the suspicion is that they still trade drugs, through a local network.

The Bissau-Conakry Strategy
Several years ago, two long-friends met in Guinea Conakry to talk about some business opportunities. They were Lasana Conte and Joao Vieira, the presidents of Guinea Conakry and Guinea Bissau. It was 2006 and cocaine trafficking in West Africa was at a development stage.








President Lasana Conte proposed that his counterpart Nino Vieira come on board, and then easily convinced him to allow Latin American traffickers to use Guinea Bissau as point of transit for their business. The profits would be huge, the risks minimal.

In late December 2008, Conte died, after almost forty years of dictatorship. A few hours after his death, a bunch of soldiers seized power in a coup d’etat. According to this new, untried military junta that has ruled Conakry since the coup, the overall goal is to clean up the country from corruption and extirpate cocaine trafficking — and to do so before the next scheduled elections, in 2010.

On February 26th, three days before Viera was killed, Lasana Conte’s oldest son Ousmane was arrested by the military on drug charges. He confessed on national television his involvement in drug trafficking, admitting his ties with some Colombian partners.









Ousmane Conte’s trial was broadcast on TV because the junta is trying to convince the Guinean people that they’re doing something necessary for their country, something good.  It is a sort of propaganda. But according to some analysts at the UN Office of Drug Control, this is really a strategy to put the South American traffickers out of the game — to open a new era of African drug trafficking organized by Nigerians and Guineans, in cooperation with Guinea Bissau and Conakry armies.The vacuum left by the double assassination of Vieira and Tagme and the situation in Conakry opens a new scenario in West Africa. The big plan is to transform the whole region into a sort of traffickers’ paradise, a dangerous plan that may seriously destabilize West Africa, leading to new conflicts in a region that is trying to heal from bloody civil wars from the past decade in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast.

Crack and Prostitution, Cocaine’s Other Face
I drive through Reno, Bissau’s poorest slum, heading to Justino’s house. He’s 16 and a crack addict. Justino started to smoke quisa, as they call crack in Bissau, one year ago with his sister, Sadia. Now they both spend the whole day smoking the drug. Since they started, their old lives vanished. Justino lost his job and Sadia began to sell her own body. It’s 10 a.m. when I park my car in front of their house. Sadia waits by the door, holding her cachimbo, the crack pipe that has become her best friend. All around the house it’s garbage, rotten water and pigs.









This sounds like any other crack story, but there’s a difference: We are in Guinea Bissau, a place where crack was totally unknown until traffickers decided three years ago to target this country.

Sadia’s eyes are lost into the emptiness that surrounds her life. She waits for her brother to bring the drug. He comes with a friend and they immediately start smoking. I sit on the house floor with them. Sadia stretches out on a mattress while Justino and his friend feed the pipe; they start the ritual, which lasts at least 40 minutes. They completely ignore me. They ignore everything but the cachimbo. Their entire lives revolve around the drug.

The situation in Bissau is particularly sad. There is no prevention, no rehabilitation. The issue is so new that there is no data available. It’s impossible to say how many people are lost in crack addiction. And mostly, there is no consciousness among the people about the long-term effects of this plague. 









I meet Sadia and her group of friends at Baiana’s, at night. They are all prostitutes, all crack addicts. They spend most of the time waiting for a client to take them to a brothel. At one point a white, brand new, four-wheel-drive Toyota parks in front of the restaurant. On the doors, the Portuguese flag and the logo from the Cooperacion Portuguesa. The driver and his friend sit to drink some beers when Nadi and Tusha, two of Sadia’s friends, join the men. They will leave a few minutes later, on the Jeep.

Prostitution in Bissau is not for locals. Nobody can afford to pay a prostitute, and in the local culture, women cannot refuse a man. All the clients are foreigners. Sometimes sailors from anywhere, but mostly people who work for NGOs, the UN or Embassy employees. Almost every night I shared a coffee with Nadi, Tusha, Sadia, Fatima, Carolina and other prostitutes. They are somewhat proud of their work, and they see crack addiction as a minor issue. Smoking a cigarette or doing quisa – it’s just the same, to them.










They all dream of going to Europe – to Spain or Portugal or Italy. Nadi has a daughter who lives in Spain. She had the child with a Spanish businessman who used to travel to Bissau often: she doesn’t live with her child but says she is happy all the same, for the 250 Euros per month she receives from the father.

Nuno (an alias name) is a Portuguese sailor. He used to work on a ship but was forced to stay in Bissau after he fought with the captain. He asked his family to send him money to come back, but then got lost into alcohol. He’s a usual client of the girls and he has AIDS. He’s always drunk and spends his nights at the Baiana before heading off with two or three girls. The alarming issue is that none of the prostitutes that I met use condoms.










Since cocaine arrived in Bissau crack has spread, prostitution has increased and so has HIV-AIDS. Drug trafficking has destroyed the precarious political stability of Guinea Bissau and destroyed the lives of thousands of people. They are paying the price of Europe’s voracious appetite for coke.

Marco Vernaschi

 A gangster's paradise
In Bissau I met a former journalist who had been a correspondent for a Portuguese magazine, I ask him to show me where the local drug lords live. We meet at night, in front of my hotel and went for a ride through the darkness, where he felt safer than in bar.










“It all started when the fishermen found the drug in the sea…” he tells me while I drive “…a load of cocaine was dumped overboard, from a ship that was intercepted by the Senegalese coast guard, in 2005. The fishermen in Biombo found these packs and didn't even know what it was. Some of them used it to fertilize their crops, some to paint their bodies and others simply kept the packs in their house. In this country very few knew what cocaine was.” He shakes his head, and smiles bitterly. We pass in front of the UN Building, taking a dark deserted road.

“See this? That’s where Augusto Bliri lives”. My journalist friend points to a huge mansion with a yellow Hummer parked in the courtyard. “That’s the traffickers neighbourhood. This other house is where Bubo Na Tchuto used to live before he fled to Gambia… I guess the house is empty now… Look, over there, that was Pablo Camacho’s hideout”.











I keep on driving through this kind of Hollywood where the actors are drug lords and show biz is replaced by cocaine trade. Each mansion is guarded by armed security.

One is the local gangster, one the Colombian trafficker, and one, Na Tchuto, a former Rear Admiral for Guinea Bissau’s navy. Neighbours, and business partners. Augusto Bliri is a young but talented drug lord who is legend in Bissau. He’s the one who started the cocaine business in the country. He lived in Germany for several years, so when the fishermen found the mysterious packs with the white powder, he instantly knew what to do: he bought some kilos for almost nothing and converted them into hundreds of thousand of Euros. He spends most days driving around in his yellow Hummer and he often visit the Samaritana, a small bar in front of a parking lot in the centre of Bissau. 

In this place, traffickers and dealers share drinks while watching children cleaning their SUVs for few coins. Bliri’s gang is the strongest in town, that everyone either respects or fears, depending on the point of view. A few months ago one of Bliri’s lieutenants killed a Spanish trafficker in Bissau who had tried to steal some cocaine.  The police arrested and imprisoned the suspected killer but after three days he was freed. No trial, no evidence. Nothing. 

The same happened when Bliri was busted and convicted in 2006. The Police found firearms in his Hummer and a large amount of money. He was sentenced to four years but his lawyer, Carlos Lopes Correira, convinced the judge to let him go; his client was sick, Correira argued, and the basement where he was imprisoned was unhealthy.

I ask Lucinda Barbosa, chief of the Bissau police, if Bliri’s gang is in some way connected to the Lebanese network. “Of course they are. The Lebanese are too smart, and would never put their own hands in the fire, so they protect these gangs because they need someone to do ‘the job’. These kids are untouchable, and they know it. They resolve any problem with bribes so they don’t fear anyone.”

I managed to infiltrate into Bliri’s gang, but in two months I never met him personally. The Interpol knew I wanted to infiltrate, so they provided me with valuable advice and information. 

I approached one of Biliris’ lieutenants (I will call him Omar, an alias that I promised to use to protect his identity) the third day I was in Bissau. He was smoking marijuana with his friends at the Samaritana. After an improvised conversation about cars and music I suddenly ask him to meet me, this same night.

“I’ll be waiting for you at the Kilimanjaro, at 11 o’clock,” Omar replied. The Kilimanjaro is an isolated, dark patio with a grill that the owner calls “a restaurant.” While approaching the table where Omar was waiting, I realized there was nobody else in this place. Even the owner was gone. But I already was there, with him.

“Have a sit and let’s talk… what can I do for you?” he said shaking my hand. I was a bit nervous, but I sensed he was tense, too. My strategy was to be straight and tell him exactly who I was and what I was looking for. “I know who you are and what your business is but, frankly, I don’t care. I have no intention to denounce you, nor to give you troubles. I just need you to show me how the whole thing works. I'm a photographer and I'm making a book on cocaine. But don’t worry; nobody will know your name nor see your face. I promise. Would you help me?”


That’s exactly what I told him, word by word. I waited for few seconds, until he replied. “Holy crap… I don’t know if you’re crazy or brave, but what you are asking for is really risky. I have great respect for you, brother, but you’re a little mad! Do you know you could have been killed if you would have met someone else rather than me?” His answer kind of surprised me, but reading between the lines I understood this was a sceptical “yes”. After the conversation we had a drink. He took my phone number, and then we both left.

In the weeks that followed I met him almost every day. He tested me several times, gradually opening up to reveal his world. He introduced me to his people, inviting me three times in one week to share dinner with his gang. I’m still not sure if this was a way to have his friends pass judgment on me or if it was, in some way, a spontaneous and sincere attempt at socializing.

In any case I was gaining credibility and Omar’s respect, and after two weeks I felt we really trusted each other. It was carnival in Bissau, and I was invited for a beer at the cabañas of barrio Bra, a place where no stranger would go alone. Everyone was drinking and dancing to the loud beats of Bissau’s pop music. Omar was a little high and started to tell me about his problems with his girl. I think we had become, somehow, friends after this night.

The cliché of drug trafficker that we all have in mind is something that we inherited from Miami Vice or similar movies. In Bissau, most of the gangsters are still very naïve as the drug trade’s dynamics are still new to them. They are mostly kids who never had a single chance, most of them have been living in poverty their whole life, and cocaine trafficking is an unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the only real chance to achieve something and leave their slums. 

Augusto Bliri is the local hero because he was the first who took this chance. He’s smarter than every other local drug lord in Bissau and he’s extremely dangerous, always carrying a gun on his person and an Uzzi in his Hummer. After some weeks, I ask Omar if Bilri knows that I exist. I already know the answer, but I need to test Omar. He laughs at the question, “If Augusto wouldn't know about you, we wouldn't be here now. I gave him my word that you’re reliable. If you do something wrong I will probably get killed, but in this case I wouldn't be the only who would die. You know, we have our rules here. This is Africa, brother”.

One of the things I liked most about Omar was that he was honest, direct and clear. And he was always on time, a rare quality in Bissau. We gather for another party in an apparently abandoned lot where the gang set up a wall screen with a DVD projector playing one of 50Cent’s concerts. The grills are crowded with dozens of camaraos tigre, a jumbo shrimp the size of a lobster. Four buckets are filled with beers and a group of girls, the gang’s groupies, dance and shake just like Beyonce taught. The men keep on drinking.

None of them speaks English, but to celebrate they salute 50Cents with a loud “Go, mother fucker!” followed by a big laugh. I’m pretty sure they have no idea what it means, but it’s what the singer says. “One of these days I’ll show you what happens to those who break the rules” says Omar, holding my arm. He had a strange smile on his face and his eyes were shining when he pointed at mine. I was shivering and asked what he meant to say. “Ah-ah-ah!” He erupted into a loud laugh “You don’t have to worry, nothing is going happened to you... unless you break some rule…” He keeps laughing, my face paralysed and my eyes clearly betraying my emotions. “No one is going to die, don’t worry… we don’t kill people that often here… we’re cool. I'm just going to show you something, but not tonight.”

Omar is a good guy, but sometimes he’s a little scary. When I leave the party I keep wondering what he was talking about; but it was a few  days later before I had an answer. I was in my room, ready to sleep, when my phone rings, a few minutes before midnight. You should come now. There’s something I promised to show you... remember? Go to the airport, in the parking lot.You will find my friends there in half an hour… and don’t forget your camera!”

I don’t know what to do, I’m freaking scared and I don’t know what I'm about to see. I’m not sure accepting the invitation is wise but it could be maybe dangerous not to. A waltz of doubts and theories starts to dance in my mind, but after half an hour I'm at the airport.

When I arrive, nobody is there. I lock my car, wait for a few minutes, and then a four-wheel-drive arrives. They approach my car and, from the window, a guy tells me to jump on the front seat. Omar is not in the car but I recognize the guy who drives. I don’t know his name and I never talked with him before, but he’s always around at the parties. When I get in the car I see there are three other guys in the back seat. The one in the middle is blindfolded with the two guys at his sides holding a rifle each. One of them wears a SWAT hood, holding a pistol against the hostage.

That’s way too much for me; I want to leave. But I can’t. I wish I was in a movie and I feel ridiculous with my cameras. We drive toward Quinhamel, a little village 30 minutes from Bissau, when the car suddenly takes a secondary road, surrounded by cashew trees. Nobody in the car say a single word. I smoke two cigarettes. In a few minutes the car finally stops. The three guys get off, with their hostage.

“If you want to take pictures, do it. Just make sure not to take my face… I’ll check your camera later”. The driver seemed to be extremely relaxed.

I'm praying they won’t kill him, and I stay in the car. I nervously start to photograph, through the windshield, while outside the gangsters point their rifles at the hostage. They speak Creole, so I don’t understand a single word, but it was clear they were threatening this poor guy with death, asking questions that he never answered. He was so scared he didn’t even cry.

While two of the guys were questioning the hostage, the driver disappeared under a tree. He was comfortably smoking a cigarette. I get out of the car, with caution. I shoot two or three pictures before they force the hostage on his knee. They point a gun to his head and after more threats they kick him to the ground. The man is shaking. The driver suddenly says we must go, so we get into the car. The hostage is left in the middle of nowhere, at 2 in the morning and far from Bissau. But at least he’s alive.

“You knew we wouldn't have killed him, right? This guy talked too much … he should pay more attention. The next time he could have serious troubles…”

Double assassination

A confidential source close to the Interpol, who spoke in condition of anonymity, tells me that a private jet arrived in Bissau on Thursday, February 26, three days before the assassination of army chief Tagme Na Wai. 

The plane landed and took off a few hours later from but strangely there is no record of such aircraft at the airport’s flight traffic office. This same day 200 kilos of cocaine disappeared from the Navy’s storage; some soldiers known to be loyal to President Joao Bernardo Vieira were spotted loading the flight, by the hangar where the plane was parked.


















TheDEA and the Spanish police confirm that it was July 12th when the Gulf stream N351SE proceeding from Venezuela jet landed in Bissau,loaded with 500 kilos of cocaine. The Guinean police immediately surrounded the jet and arrested three Venezuelans; they were  identified as Carmelo Vásquez Guerra, Carlos Luis Justiniano Núñez and Daniel Aguedelo Acevedo. Three policemen and two airtraffic-control agents were also arrested and charged with complicity with the traffickers.

Five days later, the Interpol, in cooperation with the DEA and FBI, inspected the flight with a drug-sniffing dog, confirming that cocaine had been transported on the jet. But the drug had vanished. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UNODC confirmed later that “hundred of boxes (containing cocaine) had been taken out from this jet” and opened an investigation on the case, with the FBI, Interpol and DEA.

The interesting issue in this case, which shows connections with the Mexican drug cartels, is that pilot Carmelo Vasquez Guerra was investigated by the Mexican Police (# PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/117/2006), for a DC-9 jet, N900SA, also proceeding from Venezuela and loaded with 5 tons of cocaine, that landed in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, Mexico, on April 10t, 2006. During this operation Miguel Vasquez Guerra, Carmelo’s brother, was arrested along with five other members of the jet’s crew. The crew is reputed to have been part of the Chapo Guzman criminal organization, the most powerful among the Mexican drug cartels.

Chapo Guzman Captured April 2014

He was later taken into custody by Mexican authorities, and charged with flying an airplane packed with 128 identical suitcases filled with cocaine. Getting caught with  5.5 tons of cocaine would seem to call for some serious jail time. Reporters in Mexico assumed he’d been sent to prison. So imagine reporter Francisco Gomez of Mexico City's El Universal  surprise when he made a startling discovery:  Carmelo Vasquez Guerra—amazingly and inexplicably—had been released from prison less than two years after being arrested. 

But news about Carmelo kept coming, and kept getting worse. Gomez discovered that Mexico was not the only country to arrest Vasquez Guerra for the presumably major offence of flying container sized loads of cocaine, only to let him go. It's happened in three. Caught and released under mysterious and unexplained circumstances. in Mexico, in Guinea Bissau, and in Mali, home of Timbuktu.






















Mexico's most wanted man,"El Chapo", or Shorty,heads the Sinaloa cartel, one of the biggest suppliers of Cocaine to the U.S. In 1993 was arrested in Mexico on homicide and drug charges. Escaped from federal prison in 2001, reportedly through the laundry, and quickly regained control of his drug trafficking organization, which he still controlled until his arrest in February 2014 .

The cartel’s tentacles stretch from New York City to Buenos Aires and almost every major city in between. It has successfully penetrated government and security forces wherever it operates. It often opts for the bribe over the bullet and alliances over fighting, but it is not above organizing its forces to overrun areas that it wants to control by force. Its central bond is blood: many of its members are related by blood or by marriage. 

However, the cartel also often acts more like a federation than a tightly knit organization. The core of the group, the Beltran Leyva Organization, split from the rest in 2008. The Sinaloa Cartel has since created new alliances with former enemies in the Gulf Cartel and the Familia Michoacana. More shifts are to be expected as these alliances, even those formed by blood, are tenuous.

The state of Sinaloa has long been a centre for contraband in Mexico, as well as a home for marijuana and poppy cultivation. Nearly all of the trafficking organizations in Mexico have their origins in the region. They were, in essence, a small group of farming families that lived in rural parts of the state. In the 1960s and 1970s, they moved from the contraband trade into drugs, particularly marijuana. One of the first to traffic marijuana in bulk was Pedro Aviles, who later brought his friend's son, Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias "El Chapo," into the business.

Aviles was killed in a shootout with police in 1978. In the latter part of the 1970s, the various families branched into moving cocaine for Colombian and Central American traffickers, and shifted their operations to Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco. Their leaders included Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo. Working closely with the Honduran Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, the men came into contact with Colombia's Medellin Cartel. Matta Ballesteros lived part-time in Colombia, where he operated as the main intermediary between Mexican and Colombian traffickers, particularly the Medellin and Guadalajara Cartels. They established the patterns that we see repeated today: movement of bulk shipments of cocaine via air plane and boat to Central America and Mexico, then by land routes into the United States. The boldness of the Mexican traffickers became evident when they murdered undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.

The death of Camarena was the beginning of the end of the Guadalajara Cartel. U.S. pressure forced Mexican authorities to act, and the leaders of the cartel fled. The remaining factions established bases in various parts of Mexico. The Arellano Felix brothers set up camp in Tijuana. The Carrillo Fuentes family moved to Juarez. Guzman and his partner, Hector Luis Palma Salazar, remained in the Sinaloa area.





















The battles between these organizations began almost immediately. In November 1992, Guzman sent 40 gunmen to raid a Tijuana Cartel party in Puerto Vallarta, killing nine people. The Tijuana Cartel responded by trying to assassinate Guzman at the Guadalajara airport in 1993, killing a Mexican Cardinal instead. Guzman fled to Guatemala where he was arrested two weeks later. Palma Salazar was arrested in 1995.

The operations remained under the auspices of Joaquin's brother, Arturo Guzman Loera, Ramon Laija Serrano, and Hector, Alfredo and Arturo Beltran Leyva. Guzman maintained some control from prison, passing messages through his lawyers. He escaped in 2001, anticipating a decision to extradite him to the United States. He quickly resumed full control of the organization and assumed legendary status for constantly eluding capture.























In 2008 Mexican and Colombian traffickers laundered between $18 billion and $39 billion in proceeds from wholesale shipments to the U.S. Shorty, an alleged tunnels expert, is believed to have directed anywhere from a third to half of that during the past 8 years.


Business has boomed since Guzman's escape, especially following the incarceration and deaths of the Norte del Valle Cartel and Colombian paramilitary leaders, the two key suppliers of raw cocaine to the Sinaloa factions, and the incarceration and deaths of some of Guzman's Mexican rivals. Indeed, since his escape in 2001, Guzman implemented an ambitious plan. This began with a meeting Guzman organized in Monterrey with, among others, Ismael Zambada, alias "El Mayo," Arturo Beltran Leyva and Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno, alias "El Azul." The four men are more than trafficking partners, they are of the same blood: cousins by marriage, brothers in law, or otherwise connected via the small communities they come from, which is why their group is often referred to as the "alianza de sangre" (blood alliance).

El Chapo Guzman

Together they planned the death in 2004 of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, who was one of the heads of the Juarez Cartel. The group of traffickers, who authorities used to called the "Federation," now operates in 17 Mexican States, numerous cities in the United States, and from Guatemala to Argentina. By some estimates, it operates in as many as 50 countries.

In recent months the Sinaloa has suffered a number of blows, with rival groups eating into their territory. The Zetas may be trying to take Guadalajara, while Sinaloa breakaway groups Gente Nueva and Los Ms are struggling for control of Durango.


During the operation carried out in Bissau the Interpol was able to seize seven satellite phones. These were decrypted, providing important information about this net of drug traffickers. I meet Lucinda Barbosa in her office, at the Judiciary Police offices, to ask some questions about the jet that was seized in November.

“I’m fighting a war, alone, against someone that I will never defeat,” she said. “Look at our offices…We have nothing here. The international community keeps promising aid but we are working with just one car and most of our agents have had no salary for four months. Of course they are corrupted, they need to feed their families! How can we possibly compete with drug traffickers?” 
Then she locks the door, and picks up a folder from her desk. “I want to show you the situation we have here. If you want to investigate, you need a clear picture.” Lucinda opens the folders, and shows me a series of pictures taken with a mobile phone, by one of her informants, at the airport. They depict some soldiers, in uniform, unloading the private jet seized in November. Their faces aren't clearly visible, but a witness would be able to identify them.

“See? That’s how things work here. We had the flight, the pilot and the pictures. We also had the drugs but then it vanished… This would have been an easy trial in your country, but here nothing happened. The judge said the pictures don’t show any evidence and now that the drug has gone, the trial is dead. I’m really sick of that and I feel alone.” 

From the day this plane was seized, the equilibrium between the Army and President changed and Bissau streets turned more violent. Bubo Na Tchuto, former Chief of the Navy, was arrested in November and fled to Gambia a few hours after. The president’s compound was assaulted in December in what appeared to be more a settling of scores than an attempted coup d’etat. At least 15 people died in drug-related crimes. The assassination of the General and the President were just the last chapter of a series.

President Nino Viera was aware of the power that his generals were gradually gaining and began to feel isolated. The jet issue of November 2008 added more problems and so he decided, investigators believe, to eliminate all those who were putting at risk his business. They say the goal was to strengthen his position at home – and to regain control over the drug trafficking trade. He needed to show the Latin American drug cartels that Guinea Bissau was still a convenient place for their business.

A confidential informant is a person who provides information about criminal activity to law enforcement officers. The identities of these individuals are privileged in order to protect these individuals against retribution from those involved in crime. 

On a sultry May afternoon in 2009, a car stopped at the end of a dirt road in the Liberian capital of Monrovia. Guards toting Kalashnikov rifles opened the gate to a large house, and the vehicle rolled into the driveway, setting off a chorus of barking by a group of mastiffs caged inside the compound. A muscular Nigerian named Chigbo Umeh stepped out of the car with two Colombians, both members of a drug cartel. The three were led into an elegantly decorated living room, where one of the most powerful figures in the Liberian government was waiting.

Their host was Fombah Teh Sirleaf, the stepson of Liberia’s president and director of the country’s National Security Agency. After Sirleaf had greeted the visitors, the men sat down to talk. Chigbo, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that showed off his biceps, opened the conversation with a line that summed up his worldview. “In this life,” he said, smiling, “you have to make some money.” He then spelled out the cartel’s proposition: it would pay Sirleaf handsomely in exchange for his help in using Liberia as a transit hub for smuggling cocaine from Colombia into Europe. The traffickers would bring the cocaine into the west African country by air and sea; from there, they would move it to cities across western Europe, where the drug fetches as much as £34,000 per kilogramme.

Chigbo Umeh

Sirleaf assured them of his cooperation before sitting back and letting his representative, who called himself Nabil Hage, take over. Hage, a balding man of Mediterranean descent, laid out the terms of the deal, fiddling with a pack of Marlboro Lights as he spoke. Sirleaf’s men would take care of security arrangements at the airport and at ports. For bringing in a tonne of cocaine, the traffickers would have to pay $1m upfront and provide 50kg of cocaine that Hage said would be smuggled to the United States. He was very insistent on this final point.

Fombah Teh Sirleaf

The meeting went on for two hours, with Chigbo and Hage doing most of the talking. Chigbo, blustery and keen to control the negotiations, cut Hage off when Hage began conversing directly with the Colombians in Spanish. “These are my people,” he told Hage sternly. “You don’t talk to them. You talk to me.” Worried about eavesdropping, Chigbo would pause the discussion every time Sirleaf’s housekeeper came in to serve drinks or empty the ashtray. One of the Colombians took notes on a tablet computer. The two sides eventually agreed to an advance payment of $200,000; the balance would be paid after the traffickers had brought their first shipment into the country.

Monrovia, West Africa

Shortly after the visitors had left, three agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) arrived. One of the agents was Sam Gaye, a friend of Sirleaf. Every minute of the meeting had been recorded by cameras hidden inside the room. What the traffickers had taken as the closing of a deal was in fact the opening of a sting operation planned by the DEA and the Liberian National Security Agency.

Reviewing the videos of the meeting, Gaye thought Chigbo’s face looked familiar. Later, when he saw a mug shot of the Nigerian, familiarity turned into recognition. “I know this guy,” Gaye said. “I arrested him in the 1990s.”

In the decades since President Richard Nixon formally declared a “war on drugs”in 1971, naming drug abuse “public enemy number one in the United States”, that war has evolved from a primarily domestic effort into an offensive that crisscrosses the globe. The DEA, formed in 1973, partnered with law enforcement agencies in Mexico and Colombia through the 80s and the 90s to help destroy marijuana plantations and cocaine labs in those countries. Under the Ronald Reagan administration, DEA agents trained with the military and entered South American nations such as Bolivia to aid local police fight drug cartels. The argument for these incursions was straightforward: a significant portion of the drug supply into the United States originated in or passed through these countries. Disrupting the supply near the source, before it crossed over into the US, was a desirable solution.

DEA FAST Team

 Over the past decade, the DEA has taken the fight to other parts of the globe in the belief that breaking up drug trafficking organisations anywhere in the world benefits the United States. Elite DEA squads of commandos trained by the US military have been deployed in Afghanistan, where narco-trafficking helped fund the Taliban, as well as in Haiti, Honduras, Belize and the Dominican Republic. In recent years, the DEA has increased its presence in Africa, primarily in response to the growing footprint of Colombian and Venezuelan drug cartels in west African countries. DEA agents based in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt have conducted a series of investigations in the region, exercising extra-territorial authority to pursue charges against individuals overseas.

As a result, several drug traffickers arrested in west Africa have been extradited to the United States and prosecuted under US law. The trend has created the distinct impression that the DEA is, increasingly, assuming the mantle of global cop. Appearing before the US Senate caucus on international narcotics control in 2012, the DEA’s deputy administrator, Thomas Harrigan, explained the rationale behind the agency’s extended reach. “The cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, chemical, money laundering and narcoterrorism threats in Africa have an impact on the US,” he said, “particularly since some of the drug trafficking organisations that smuggle illicit drugs in the US are the same as those using Africa as a base of operations for smuggling drugs in Europe and the Middle East.”

Sam Gaye, one of the three DEA agents who led the operation to nab Chigbo and his associates, has served as a foot soldier in this expanded war. He is a bald man with kindly eyes and a quiet demeanour, closer in image to a laid-back school principal than a cop. Despite that unassuming persona – or perhaps because of it – Gaye has successfully navigated danger time and again throughout his career, having run dozens of undercover operations for the DEA. He has often played the role of a drug dealer himself.

Born in Liberia, Gaye moved to the United States when he was 20, and went to college in Philadelphia before joining the DEA 11 years later, in 1987. In one of his first cases, he posed as a corrupt African diplomat and negotiated a fake drug deal with a Dominican drug trafficker and his aide, a Washington, DC cop, at a parking lot in DC. In 1989, upon instructions from his supervisor, Gaye had an informant show up near the White House and sell him a bag of cocaine. He learned later that the operation had been requested by White House officials who wanted the bag as a prop for a speech by President George HW Bush about the nation’s fight against drugs.

In the early 90s, Gaye was posted to Nigeria to track down fugitives and leads relating to cases the DEA was pursuing in the United States. A decade later, in 2005, after stints in Haiti and Puerto Rico, Gaye returned to Nigeria for a second posting to help the DEA fight an alarming trend. Once considered a backwater of the international drug trade, west Africa was quickly becoming a hub for cocaine smuggling. Colombian cartels had already established safe passage for their contraband through Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Guinea by bribing top government and military officials. In an increasingly interconnected world, these new trafficking routes were seen by the DEA to be as much of a threat to the United States as to Europe and Africa.

In the autumn of 2007, Gaye received a phone call at his office in Lagos. It was from Fombah Sirleaf, who had spent part of his childhood in Philadelphia and got to know Gaye when he was there. Sirleaf’s mother was at the time married to a distant cousin of Gaye, and Gaye often came over to their house to visit. Sirleaf, who was not yet a teenager, came to regard Gaye as a big brother. Through the decades since, their friendship had grown.

Sirleaf told Gaye he had something important to discuss with him that he couldn’t mention on the phone. Gaye flew to Monrovia for a meeting. Sirleaf said he had been approached by a cocaine trafficking organisation that wanted to use Liberia as a base. Gaye suggested that the DEA could help Sirleaf’s national security agency identify the traffickers and stop them. If Sirleaf simply turned them away, they were likely to target other officials in the Liberian government. Preventing traffickers from making inroads in Liberia wouldn't just be an act of goodwill by the DEA – the operation would further its goal of disrupting global drug trafficking networks.

After Sirleaf’s stepmother, President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, gave her approval, the DEA and the National Security Agency began planning a sting. Leading the effort, along with Gaye, were three agents from the DEA’s special operations division in Chantilly, Virginia: Lou Milione, a former movie actor who helped capture the international arms dealer Viktor Bout, and two of Milione’s younger colleagues, James Stouch and Ryan Rapaszky.

Supervisors at the DEA suggested that Gaye play the role of Sirleaf’s assistant, but Gaye felt uneasy because he had heard that a Nigerian was involved. “I had this intuition,” he told me. “Something told me it could be somebody that could recognise me because I have put Nigerians in jail.”

The special operations division ended up assigning the primary undercover role to a Greek-American named Spyros Enotiades, a flamboyant, talkative personality who had worked with the DEA on dozens of cases before. With his Mediterranean looks, Enotiades was a natural fit for the part he’d been given: that of Nabil Hage, an ostensible member of the Lebanese expatriate community, which controls several businesses in Liberia. Picking Enotiades for the job – rather than Gaye – proved to be a prescient choice. If Gaye had been the one to represent Sirleaf in negotiating with Chigbo, the sting would have ended in an instant.

Chigbo Umeh, from Nigeria, who had previously spent time in a US jail.
Chigbo got into the drug trade in the early 1990s, when he was a student in Lagos, studying business administration. The university shut down because of a strike just as he was getting ready to take his final exams. Frustrated by the delay in graduating, the enterprising Chigbo began helping Nigerian friends in the US to smuggle heroin from Afghanistan through Nigeria into New Jersey. He earned so much money that he forgot about returning to college when the strike ended.

But the good times were soon to be interrupted. In 1993, a DEA investigation in New Jersey led to federal indictments against Chigbo and his associates. Chigbo, who had yet to set foot in the United States, became a fugitive in the eyes of American law.

For about two years, the indictment did not change anything for Chigbo, who continued to traffic heroin through Lagos. Then, one day in 1995, before sunrise, one of Gaye’s informants led a team of Nigerian law enforcement officials – accompanied by Gaye – to an apartment in an affluent Lagos suburb where Chigbo had been living with roommates. He laughed as the team handcuffed him and marched him out of the building. He was not as nonchalant, however, when officials put him on a flight to the US, accompanied by Gaye. “Then he knew it was serious,” Gaye told me.

Chigbo served a six-year sentence in the US, and was sent back to Nigeria after his release in 2001. If the jail term was aimed at reform, it was a failure. When he returned home, Chigbo moved up in the trafficking world. Travelling between South America, Europe and Africa, he graduated from moving heroin in and out of Nigeria to brokering deals involving hundreds of kilograms of cocaine across continents. He taught himself Spanish and built connections with members of a Colombian cartel who found in him the ideal partner to help them carve out new trafficking routes through west Africa.

After that first meeting at Sirleaf’s house in the summer of 2009, Chigbo stayed in touch with Nabil Hage by phone. In October, he returned to Monrovia for another discussion with Sirleaf and Hage that was again secretly filmed by the DEA. He attempted to convince Sirleaf to allow the drugs to come into Liberia without a down payment, but Sirleaf and Hage would not budge. They were anxious not to arouse suspicion and did not want to lose authenticity in Chigbo’s eyes. “You need to pay $200,000 before anything can happen,” Sirleaf told Chigbo, who agreed to wire the money when he went back to Nigeria.

But the payment did not arrive as promised. Chigbo called Hage to explain that banking rules in Nigeria were causing a problem. He would have to break up the $200,000 into several smaller amounts and wire those individually into the Liberian account that Hage had provided. When he called Hage again a day or so later to say he was still having trouble, Gaye texted Chigbo from a Liberian mobile phone to make it look like a message from Sirleaf: “Chigbo, there have been too many delays. If I don’t get the money now, don’t call me any more. The deal is off.”

Chigbo panicked. Within minutes, he called Hage to say that he was willing to pay $100,000 in cash immediately if Hage could have a trusted person to pick up the money in Lagos. Hage agreed, and Gaye began planning the pick-up, recruiting a young woman he knew in Lagos to do the job. They arranged for the exchange to take place in the lobby of the Federal Palace Hotel in downtown Lagos. At the agreed hour later that day, Chigbo’s courier showed up at the hotel and handed Gaye’s contact a bundle of $100 bills wrapped in a newspaper.

Now that real money had changed hands, the deal was on. “Chigbo figured he got Sirleaf,” Gaye told me. “He had the credibility now.” Over the next few months, from late 2009 to early 2010, Chigbo made several trips to Monrovia, sometimes accompanied by the Colombians.

With Sirleaf’s blessing guaranteed, the DEA agents and their Liberian counterparts expected the traffickers to waste no time in having the cocaine flown into Liberia. But Chigbo wanted to revise the business plan. Bringing in a single tonne of cocaine at a time would not be cost-effective for the traffickers, he explained to Hage and Sirleaf. They would need to fly in bigger shipments to make it profitable enough for investors in Colombia, and that would require a larger aircraft. “He was very articulate in explaining the breakdown of the different costs, and why the initial proposal would need to get adjusted,” the DEA’s Ryan Rapazsky told me. “It was a drug dealer’s version of economics 101.”

Team Konstantin Yaroshenko

Chigbo’s partners only had access to small planes, and they asked for help in arranging a larger plane. The DEA had one on hand. Working a trafficking case out of neighbouring Guinea two years earlier, the agency had confiscated a Russian Antonov that, in addition to having the required capacity, was equipped with an extended fuel tank that would enable it to fly straight from Venezuela to Monrovia.

Heading for NY

Even before the operation in Liberia began, DEA agents had been pursuing a Russian pilot named Konstantin Yaroshenko, a handsome, blue-eyed man in his 40s who they believed to be an international transporter of contraband. Since June 2009, the DEA had been looking to develop a case against him and now an informant had told them that Yaroshenko was looking for work.

The DEA thought pairing Chigbo’s partners with Yaroshenko would seem like a perfect solution to both sides. The informant put Yaroshenko in touch with Nabil Hage, who flew to Ukraine for meetings with the pilot, first in December 2009 and again in March 2010. During the conversations in March, at Kiev’s Intercontinental Hotel, Yaroshenko agreed to provide his services to Chigbo’s Colombian partners. He would fly cocaine from South America to Liberia, and then from Liberia to Ghana and other parts of Africa.

Despite soliciting Hage’s help in finding a larger aircraft and a pilot, the Colombians did not need Yaroshenko’s services to fly their first shipment from South America. By April 2010, they were finalising plans to send 2,000kg of cocaine to Monrovia by a Gulfstream business jet controlled by one of the traffickers, a Colombian named Marcel Acevedo Sarmiento. The shipment was expected to be flown in by mid-May. The traffickers still wanted to hire Yaroshenko, however, to fly a portion of the shipment from Liberia to Ghana. Chigbo would send it on from there to Europe, into the hands of bulk dealers in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

At the end of April, three of the DEA team – Stouch, Rapazsky and Milione – who had flown in and out of Liberia several times over the previous year, travelled to Monrovia once again for what they envisioned as the last phase of the sting. Chigbo was going to be there when the shipment arrived in May. Hage had invited Yaroshenko to be there as well. The plan was to seize the cocaine when it landed and swoop down on all the targets.

Then began the waiting game. Chigbo was stuck in the Netherlands because of the eruption of the Iceland volcano, which had forced thousands of flights to be cancelled from 14 April to early May. When he finally made it to Monrovia, there was still no word from the Colombians on when the shipment would arrive.

On 13 May, Hage arranged a meeting between Chigbo and Yaroshenko, who had landed in Monrovia days earlier. Hage wanted the two men to come to an agreement on the price to be paid to Yaroshenko for his first job – flying 700kg of the cocaine arriving in Monrovia to Accra, Ghana’s capital. When they met in a cosy hotel room, Hage asked Yaroshenko if he wanted a drink, and the Russian asked for tonic. “I’ll give you Coca-Cola. I know you like Coca-Cola,” Hage said with his usual aplomb. Chigbo and Yaroshenko exchanged greetings, sizing each other up. Hage told Yaroshenko that he had arranged for 200kg of that amount to be loaded on a Delta flight bound for the United States. “It’s going to be with diplomatic baggage,” Hage said, implying that the contraband would have safe passage through customs. Yaroshenko’s willingness to transport the cocaine, despite being made aware of Hage’s plan – as the investigators saw it – made the Russian potentially culpable of conspiring to violate US laws.

Hage stepped back, letting Chigbo and Yaroshenko haggle. The two discussed jobs within Africa, as well as transportation from South America to Liberia. At one point, when Chigbo remarked that Yaroshenko was asking for too much money, the Russian stood firm. “My friend, I know all prices from working from Latin America to here,” Yaroshenko said. “I know all prices.” The two agreed on a sum of $4.5m for flying a future shipment of five tonnes from Venezuela to Liberia. For the more immediate job of transporting to Ghana, Yaroshenko would be paid $1.2m.

Over the next few days, while they awaited word from Colombia, Chigbo and Hage continued to meet almost daily. Chigbo had a new business plan for Hage’s boss to consider: he wanted to build a lab in Liberia to make ecstasy and ice, an amphetamine drug. Using Fombah Sirleaf’s backing and influence, he told Hage, it would be easy to import the chemicals required to synthesise the drugs. He claimed to know 10 Mexican chemists– the best in the business – who could staff the lab. At one point, when Hage was talking about distributing ecstasy in the United States, Chigbo highlighted the perils of doing business there, without going into his first hand experience of those risks.

“America is a delicate market,” he said.

“Everywhere is delicate,” Hage replied. “Chigbo, tell me one place where it’s not delicate. Even fucking Colombia is delicate, man.”

“Everywhere is delicate, but what I’m talking about is in the sense that everywhere else you can do it and you can get fucked up and you can go home,” Chigbo continued. That wasn't the case in the US, he said.

He knew, he explained, because he had lived in the US for 15 years. “I went to school in America. University of Minnesota.”

“Really?,” Hage asked.

“Yes, I played football in America, I went to school on a scholarship for playing football, American football,” Chigbo replied.

“Wow. Which … which?”

“Golden Buffaloes,” Chigbo said. It sounded like a plausible name for a team.

“Really?” Hage asked, doing his best to sound admiring rather than sceptical.

“Yes.”

“You could have been a multimillionaire without all this shit,” Hage said.

Chigbo laughed, then continued with the story. He had been drafted by the New York Jets, he said, but had to quit after a year because of an injury.

“I couldn't perform. So that was it,” he said.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Hage replied, sounding sincere. “But you are OK now?”

“Yeah. I'm OK, you know, I'm OK.”

While these meetings were going on, Stouch and his fellow DEA agents had to cool their heels at their hotel, reviewing the recordings of each day’s conversations. As the wait for the anticipated shipment stretched from days to weeks, with the traffickers informing Hage of new delays, frustration mounted for the agents. “We called it Operation Speculation at those points,” Rapazsky told me. “When you do these cases, you get used to the drug traffickers not getting there on time.” To keep themselves occupied, the agents hit the hotel gym frequently. Stouch – who was training for a triathlon back home – ventured out to the ocean to swim whenever he could.

Finally, in mid-May, Hage got an email from Chigbo’s Colombian partner, Marcel Acevedo Sarmiento, providing the flight plan for the shipment. It said that the aeroplane would take off from Venezuela on 26 May. Weather problems got in the way, and the departure was scheduled for two days later. Then, on 29 May, Acevedo called Hage to say the plane had been seized by Venezuelan authorities on the tarmac.

The DEA and Sirleaf’s agency decided it was time to end the charade. Hage asked Chigbo to come to Sirleaf’s office the next day. When Chigbo showed up, Sirleaf’s assistant led him to a waiting room, where he found himself surrounded by policemen from the NSA. “I don’t want you to make any sudden moves, because if you do you could lose your life in this office,” the assistant told Chigbo. “I want to see the director,” Chigbo said with anguish, as he was put in handcuffs. “It must be a mistake.” Around the same time, another set of NSA cops arrested Yaroshenko at the hotel where he had been staying.

When Chigbo was being taken to another floor of the NSA headquarters for fingerprinting, Sirleaf passed him by on the stairway. “He didn’t look me in the eye,” Sirleaf told me. “I felt bad. Because you have been in this undercover capacity for such a long time, you develop a relationship, like you are friends, but really you are not. You feel so awkward. It’s a funny feeling.” While Chigbo was being fingerprinted, Gaye walked into the room. “Do you know this guy?” somebody asked Chigbo, pointing at Gaye. Chigbo nodded in recognition, his facial expression betraying a sense of unpleasant deja vu.

On April 10 2011, Chigbo, Yaroshenko and two of Chigbo’s accomplices stood in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, facing trial for conspiring to bring cocaine into the United States. The case rested on the DEA’s secret recordings of the conversations these men had had with Hage and Sirleaf over the previous year. Chigbo and the others now understood precisely why Hage had in the course of these meetings mentioned, time and again, that he intended to send a portion of the cocaine to the US. The traffickers’ acquiescence to Hage’s plan – even though they hadn’t thought of it themselves – was enough for them to be charged with violating American law.

None of the defendants except Yaroshenko had any qualms accepting their involvement in the global drug trade. Chigbo’s lawyer, Ivan Fisher, described his client as having been “for a very long time a very active international drug merchant all over the world”. But even though putting an end to drug trafficking anywhere in the world was a noble thing to do, Fisher argued, the United States government had no right to punish Chigbo for his actions as long as those actions did not harm the United States. “You see, no crime against the United States was ever afoot until this man named Nabil [Hage] went around attempting to create it,” Fisher said. He argued that Chigbo had in fact, after serving his six-year sentence in the US years earlier, effectively become a spokesperson for the DEA in the narcotics world, dissuading dealers from sending drugs to the US because of the risks involved.

In the end, that argument failed to save Chigbo. The jury delivered a guilty verdict for him as well as for Yaroshenko. Chigbo was later sentenced to 30 years in prison, and Yaroshenko was handed a 20-year sentence. Acevedo Sarmiento, who was to supply the cocaine, was arrested by Colombian authorities and extradited to the US. He pleaded guilty and, in March 2013, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Chigbo and I began talking by email and phone shortly after he was placed in a medium-security prison in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to begin serving his sentence. He called me once on his 44th birthday to tell me how angry he was to be thousands of miles away from friends and family. “What I did in Africa is wrong. My way of life is wrong,” he told me. “But I have nothing to do with the United States. I did not live here. I did not go to school here. I did not pay taxes here. I never asked for a loan from a US bank to start my business in Africa. I believe I have the right to make my living the way in the way I see fit in Africa, and if Nigerian law caught up with me, I should be punished there, not in the United States of America.”

Chigbo told me that he had explicitly advised against sending cocaine to the US – Europe was a more profitable market.In later conversations, Chigbo told me that he had explicitly advised Hage and Sirleaf against sending cocaine to the US, since Europe was a far more profitable market. The price of bulk cocaine in parts of the US is comparable to what it sells for in countries such as Nigeria and Ghana, Chigbo wrote to me in an email. The shipment from South America would have fetched $21,000 per kilogramme in Liberia itself and $25,000 per kilogramme in Ghana, he said, while selling for a marginally higher $27,000 per kilogramme in New York – about half the price it would command in Italy or France. “The ultimate goal of a drug dealer is to make money and make it safe,” he told me. Knowing the risks of transporting cocaine from Africa to the US, and given the slim profit margin, “tell me who will be doing that kind of deal?” Chigbo asked. “Only the delusional DEA.”

I asked Milione what he thought of Chigbo’s defence. Milione did not deny that it would generally make more economic sense for traffickers to ship cocaine from west Africa to Europe rather than to the US. However, he said, that would not automatically preclude traffickers from also taking advantage of opportunities to send a supply to the US. For example, if a trafficker had a trustworthy contact at an airline flying to New York, Milione explained, the trafficker would not mind sending a shipment there, even if the profit were smaller than selling to Europe. “The connection that they have at the airport in west Africa is the one that’s going to give them personal profit,” he told me. “They don’t care about the logic. They care about making money.”

Even though the US was not their chosen destination country, Milione denied that Chigbo and Yaroshenko were hapless victims of a DEA trap. “They knew that a portion of what was coming into Liberia was going to go to the United States. They didn’t choose to walk away,” he said. “They were nervous about that fact because they didn’t want to necessarily expose themselves to US laws but they still went forward on it.”

Milione portrayed the investigation less as an example of the US policing the world and more as a strategic strike against the multi-headed hydra of global drug trafficking – intended to help both the United States and its allies in Europe and Africa. “There was a national security interest in making sure that the trafficking groups that are in west Africa don’t believe they are completely untouchable,” Milione said.

Some have questioned the policy, especially the lengths to which the DEA is going to in order to bring these cases under US jurisdiction. As Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal-defence lawyer in Colorado, puts it on her blog, TalkLeft: “Considering unless the DEA demands otherwise, the (illusory) drugs are going from South America to Africa to Europe, why is it even their business to intervene? Or to steer non-US criminal activity into the US?”

The intervention does appear to be having an impact, however. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the estimated flow of cocaine through west Africa declined from 43 tonnes in 2007 to 16 tonnes in 2013. Bruce Bagley, an international studies professor at the University of Miami who examines the effects of the narcotics trade on security, believes it is worthwhile for the US to continue dismantling drug trafficking networks in the region. “The US needs to disrupt these organisations in west Africa to prevent them from growing much stronger and threatening many weakly institutionalised African governments in danger of becoming failed states,” he says.

For Sirleaf and Gaye, who now runs a security company in Monrovia, the operation’s success was more than an accomplishment in law enforcement. It was also a tribute to their friendship and shared love for Liberia. If the traffickers had succeeded in developing a base on Liberian soil, they told me, it would have done incalculable harm to the country’s future. “It would have been terrible,” Sirleaf said. “When you infuse that kind of money into a political system, you’re going to turn it into a narco-state.”

During the early 1980s, the Medellin cartel ran the bulk of its cocaine into North America through Florida.  It was nine-hundred-miles from Colombia to Florida.  Planes would drop water-proof loads of coke into the ocean off Florida. Forty foot speedboats – called go-fast boats – would pick it up and dash ashore with their valuable contents.  At other times, the planes would simply drop their loads onto the interior of Florida, where it would be met by trucks.

Griselda Blanco

Because of the amount of money at stake – billions of dollars – violence erupted in Miami-Dade County, as local distributors competed with one another.  Griselda Blanco was one such distributor.  Hailing from Colombia, Griselda Blanco began her criminal career as a child prostitute, and then graduated to kidnapping.  Seeing her chance, she moved to Florida, where she pushed cocaine.  Being a hardcore psychopath, murder was Griselda’s default mode. Her tendency for killing secured her nickname – the Black Widow.

1977 Meeting of Medellin and Mexican Cartels

The violence got so out of control that in 1982 President Ronald Reagan decided to do something about it.  Reagan gave approval for the South Florida Task Force.  The mission of the Task Force was to slug it out with the drug lords.  The Task Force composed of the FBI, along with elements of the army and navy, employed surveillance planes, helicopters, and boots on the ground.  Seizures of drug shipments accelerated.  The Medellin cartel lost millions of dollars.  The cartel realized that something needed to be done.  It was either do something or go out of business.

Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo

Forced to find another way to move cocaine into the U.S., the Medellin cartel decided to go overland.  The cartel contacted Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the Mexican Godfather.  Gallardo, born in Culiacan, Sinaloa, began his business career as a young boy, hawking chickens and sausages.  Later, Gallardo joined the Federales, the Mexican national police.  Hired as a bodyguard for Leopoldo Sanchez Celis, who was the governor of Sinaloa, Gallardo met Pedro Aviles Perez, another of the governor’s bodyguards.

Rafael Caro Quintero

Perez moonlighted as a drug smuggler, controlling most of the marijuana and heroin smuggled into the U.S.  Perez was an innovator, being the first to use planes to transport drugs, along with liberal bribes to officials.  Perez liked Gallardo.  He took the young man under his wing and taught him the ins and outs of drug trafficking.

Ernesto Carrillo

During a shootout with the Federales in 1978, Perez was killed.  Gallardo inherited the business, moving his product into the U.S. through Tijuana.  Because of his iron-fisted control over his kingdom, Gallardo was known as the Godfather.  The DEA was aware of Gallado, but didn’t know how powerful he was.  In 1984, a DEA agent infiltrated Gallardo’s gang.  The agent’s name was Enrique ‘Kike’ Camarena.

Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros

Kike chummied up to Gallardo, while simultaneously providing intel to the DEA.  Because of Kike’s intel, the DEA convinced the Mexicans to launch a major offensive in remote Chihuahua.  With a force comprising 450 Mexican soldiers supported by armed helicopters, the Mexican army hit Rancho Bufalo, which was a 2,500 acre marijuana farm.  Rancho Bufalo was owned and operated by Gallardo.  The farm was decimated.

Gallardo smelled a rat.  Something was fishy in Denmark.  A meeting was called. All the major players arrived and discussed the situation.  Later, another meeting was held.  All evidence pointed to Kike.

Kike and his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, were leaving the American consulate building in Guadalajara, when five gangsters attacked them, threw jackets over their heads, and tossed them into a waiting Volkswagen van.  One month later, the bodies of Kike and Avelar were discovered hundreds of miles away, in Michoacan.  The corpses were decomposing, hands and legs still bound.  Obviously, both men had been tortured and mercilessly beaten; a stick had been inserted in Kike’s rectum.  Autopsy revealed that Kike had died when his skull was caved in by a blunt object.

Later, after an intensive investigation, the DEA discovered the five gangsters responsible for Kike’s abduction were not gangsters.  They were Jalisco police officers.  The five officers were arrested by the Federales and interrogated.  All five officers confessed their part in the kidnapping, signing written confessions.  The confessions resulted in the arrest of eleven more individuals.  Warrants were issued for Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Carrillo.  Rumor had it that Quintero was behind the killing of Aviles Perez, whose death allowed Felix Gallardo to take control of Perez’s drug kingdom.  The DEA pursued Quintero, who they found in Costa Rica.  Special Forces arrested Quintero and extradited him to Mexico, where he was interrogated.  Quintero’s interrogation didn’t take long; he spilled the beans, admitting he had planned the kidnappings.

The Mexican army found Ernesto Carrillo in Acapulco, where they arrested him.  Carrillo also confessed to the kidnappings, but denied participation in Kike’s torture and murder.  Eventually, the DEA pinpointed a house in Guadalajara, where the two men had been tortured.  The DEA came away from the entire episode with a bad taste in their mouths.   Events had exposed just how corrupt Mexico was.  Evidence had been deliberately destroyed, obscured and withheld.

Pedro Avilés Pérez

Meanwhile, Gallardo had to find a new source of money.  After the destruction of Rancho Bufalo, Gallardo’s revenue flow had all but stopped.  Gallardo hooked up with Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a curly-haired drug lord from Honduras.  Matta had his own revenue problems.  At the time, Matta was cozy with Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin Cartel.  Escobar, too, had a problem.  Escobar was looking for a solution to his problem, the South Florida Task Force, which was making his business model more and more difficult.  Escobar’s business model worked like this:  drugs go out, money comes in.  But because of the South Florida Task Force the model went something like this:  drugs go out; drugs are confiscated; no money comes in.  Matta was tasked with the job of finding a new business model for the Medellin Cartel.

Pablo Escobar

Matta, who was very charismatic, decided that Gallardo’s Sinaloan gang was the remedy to the Medellin Cartel’s problem.  The Mexicans knew how to move drugs across the border into the U.S.  The smuggling methods and routes were in place.  And the Sinaloans had the men and know-how to move lots of product.  All the Colombians had to do was give the coke to the Mexicans, who would then transport it into the U.S.  The border was 2,000 miles long, which meant it was very hard to effectively patrol.

Benjaman Arellano

Matta brokered a deal.  On their part, the Colombians would provide cocaine to the Sinaloans, who would transfer it north of the border.  Once in the U.S., the Colombian distributors would pick it up and sell it.  It was a win-win business deal.  The Colombians would move product and make money; the Sinaloans would smuggle and make money, lots of money, especially since Gallardo insisted on being paid cash for the services of his gang.

It worked like a charm.

Eventually, so much cocaine was being moved by the Mexicans that they had difficulty storing the cash.  There were literally boxcars of money.  In other words, everything was just peachy.  But then Gallardo had an idea.  Rather than being paid in cash, he could demand payment in product, cocaine.  And that’s just what he did.  The Colombians didn’t balk.  They couldn’t.  They had no choice in the matter.  Florida was too risky.  The DEA was seizing shipments left and right.

Overnight, Felix Gallardo and the Sinaloan gang became cocaine kings.  They weren’t just couriers anymore.  Now they were players, moving their own product as well as that of the Colombians.  The Sinaloans went from the minor leagues to the major leagues in a single leap.  In the drug trafficking world, Felix Gallardo transitioned from the role of supporting actor to movie star.  The DEA began keeping close tabs on Gallardo, elevating his position on their Christmas Wish List.

Gallardo was a criminal, but no one had ever accused him of being stupid.  He knew the DEA lusted for him.  They wanted his ass dead or in prison.  Gallardo, attempting to lower his exposure, moved his family to Culiacan.  As soon as he arrived, he called for a high-level meeting.  All the Big Wheels of the various gangs in Guadalajara showed up.  Gallardo informed the gang leaders that he was stepping out of the limelight.  He was still the Boss of Bosses, and they still had to pay tithes.  Gallardo wasn’t giving up his rightfully due share of the profits.  Only now, instead of being both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer, he would simply be the CEO.  Day-to-day operations would be handled by territorial leaders.  In other words, Gallardo was delegating authority.

Tijuana, considered the crème de la crème of the territories, was given to Gallardo’s nephews.  Nepotism was nothing new among the gangs; it was considered standard operating procedure.  The nephews, the Arellano Felix brothers, would control and operate out of Tijuana, which came to be called the Tijuana Cartel.  What would become the Juarez Cartel was given to Amado Carrillo Fuentes.  Fuentes owned and operated twenty-seven Boeing 727s, in which he flew drugs into Mexico.  After flying the drugs in, the planes were loaded with cash, which was flown out for laundering.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes

Miguel Caro Quintero was given Sonora, which was just south of Arizona.  Thus was born the Sonora Cartel.  And the Gulf Cartel, the territory around Matamoros, was given to Juan Garcia Abrego.  The territory between Tijuana and Sonora, which was called the Sinaloa Cartel, was inherited by Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman Loeraand Ismael Zambada Garcia.

Hector “The Blond” Palma Salazar

All of the assigned cartels would be subservient to the Guadalajara Cartel, which would function as Gallardo’s administrative organization.  The administrator was Hector “The Blond” Palma Salazar.  Felix Gallardo would be the intermediary between the Colombian Cartels and the Mexican Cartels.

Unfortunately, the reorganization of his drug empire didn’t work out quite as well as Gallardo had envisioned.  For one thing, Gallardo didn’t know how to maintain a low profile.  He doled out vast amounts of cash to local charities and hung out with well-known politicians, with whom he was frequently photographed at glittering festivals and parties covered by national media outlets.  Gallardo became the subject of many popular songs – narcocorridas – that served to increase his notoriety.  And, to make things worse, the cartels, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, thought they could do anything because they had law enforcement officials in their pockets.  Most of the police were taking bribes to look the other way.  Kidnappings, rapes and murders went through the ceiling.  In fact, they went so high that the government couldn’t help but notice.

The heat was on.

The Mexican government, appalled at the atrocities committed by the cartels, began an investigation of the Mexican Cartels.  The investigation revealed what was common knowledge:  the police were corrupt.  It was like cancer, spreading everywhere.  Pressured by the DEA, the Mexican government decided to clean house.  The Mexican army arrested Gallardo in 1989.  Then they interrogated 300 members of the Culiacan police force.  Seven officers were indicted for accepting bribes, while almost one-third of the rank and file police officers quit after being questioned.

Mexico would not extradite criminals to any nation where they could face the death penalty.  Therefore, Gallardo was tried in a Mexican court.  Sentenced to forty years in prison, Gallardo continued to run his empire from behind bars, where he was allowed to use a cell phone.  Still, because Gallardo was essentially out of the loop, his organization sank into the quicksand of rivalries and greed.  Avaricious for money and territory, the Mexican Cartels eyed each other with suspicion and jealousy.

The Sinaloa Cartel didn't like the hand they had been dealt.  In effect, they had only two ways to move drugs into the U.S., through Tecate and Mexicali, neither of which led to lucrative markets, like southern California or Arizona.  The Sinaloa Cartel took a look around and considered their options.  To the east was Sonora, but the Sonora Cartel had lots of men and lots of guns.  The other option was Tijuana, controlled by the Arellano Felix brothers, who the Sinaloa Cartel considered easier pickings.  So they went to war with the Tijuana Cartel.

Benjamin Arellano Felix ran the Tijuana Cartel.  His brother, Eduardo, ran the financial side of the business, taking care of the money laundering.  Ramon, a younger brother, functioned as the Tijuana Cartel’s enforcer.  The oldest brother, Francisco, paid off politicians and police officers.  Francisco, who was an ostentatious cross-dresser, owned five houses and a discotheque called Frankie O’s.  In his heyday, Francisco was greasing palms to the tune of six million dollars per month.  The Tijuana Cartel was atypical in that many of their gang members were from affluent middle-class families.  They dressed in expensive, stylish clothing, spoke English, and were educated.  Most of them eschewed tattoos.  They transported heavy weapons into Mexico and drugs into the U.S.

The Tijuana Cartel employed a take no prisoners’ policy.  They murdered indiscriminately.  Their enforcer, brother Ramon, believed that terror kept people in line.  Ramon’s favorite methods of intimidation included the Colombian Necktie, where he slit the person’s throat, and then pulled the tongue out through the slit; using plastic bags to suffocate the enemy; cutting off heads; immersing people in acid baths; and what was called “carne asada,” where people were immolated on piles of burning tires.

When the Sinaloa Cartel tried to move in on the Tijuana Cartel’s territory, they discovered the pickings weren’t as easy as they thought.  Things got bloody real fast, and the Sinaloa Cartel realized they had pulled the tail of a tiger.  In an effort to escape a no-win situation, Shorty Guzman, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, called for a meeting with the Arellano Felix brothers.  The two cartels met and negotiated.  The Arellano Felix brothers held the winning hand and knew it.  In the end, they permitted the Sinaloa Cartel to move product through Tijuana, but the Sinaloa Cartel had to pay a hefty tariff for the privilege.  The brothers also insisted on total access to the Mexicali smuggling route into the U.S.

The deal was set.

Only Shorty Guzman didn't like the deal.  Providing his men with Federales uniforms and automatic assault rifles, Shorty ordered them to hit a disco in Puerto Vallarta.  The disco was owned and operated by a close friend of the Arellano Felixes.  Shorty had reliable information that the Arellano Felix brothers would be at the disco.  The Sinaloa gangsters rushed into the disco, weapons blazing.  Hearing the shooting, the Arellano Felix brothers realized what was going on.  Running to the nearby bathroom, the brothers used the sink as a ladder to the bathroom’s skylight.  Smashing through the skylight, they climbed onto the roof of the disco.  Jumping down, they fled into the night.

Shorty’s costumed men killed nineteen people, eight of which were members of the Tijuana Cartel.

Livid with anger, the Arellano Felix brothers plotted their revenge. In May 1993, they put their plan into action.  Learning that Shorty Guzman would be in a white Mercury Grand Marquis at the Guadalajara International Airport, Ramon sent hit men from the Tijuana Cartel to kill Guzman.  The hit men set up an ambush for the car.  When it arrived, the hit men deluged the car with bullets from automatic weapons.  The two men in the car died on the spot, along with five other travelers who had the bad luck to be in the field of fire.

Shorty Guzman was not in the car.  The man the hit men thought was Shorty Guzman was none other than a Cardinal in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo.  Since most Mexicans were Catholics, the people of Mexico were shocked and horrified by the murder.  As details of the tragedy emerged, it was the first time many Mexicans heard the term “drug cartels.”  The news media ran feature stories on the cartels, along with stories about the Arellano Felix brothers and Shorty Guzman.  The fact that these cartels could ruthlessly murder a Cardinal of the Catholic Church spoke volumes about their power and lack of morality.  Indignant at the government’s seeming impotence, the people of Mexico demanded justice.

/

Guinean police have seized 75 kg of cocaine at the Conakry port on a ship coming from Spain and destined to The Gambia, Guinea’s Police Spokesman Boubacar Kasse said Thursday.

Kasse said the ship on which the country’s special anti- narcotics unit carried out the operation, was carrying 286 containers. It was in one of the containers that the anti-narcotics police unit discovered the cocaine hidden in a bag.

The Guinean police spokesman said the ship’s commander, whose identity was not revealed, was arrested. He said investigations had been launched to identify others who were involved in the trafficking of the cocaine.

The fight against drug trafficking has become a major concern for Guinean authorities in recent years, at a time when most anti- drug trafficking agencies consider West Africa as a hub for cocaine trafficking.

The seizure of the cocaine coincides with the holding of a training seminar on the fight against drugs that is being held in Conakry. The seminar is being attended by participants from Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. The meeting is aimed at harmonizing the positions of these West African countries that are affected by the phenomenon of drug trafficking and movement of small arms.

29/10 - 18:00
Sebastian Ajavon, a prominent businessman in Benin and who came in third in the last presidential elections was arrested on Friday on suspicion of dealing in drugs.

Sources said Ajavon was arrested by coastguards at the port of Cotonou after a cocaine seizure in a container that was ferrying food products in the west African nation.

His lawyers who visited him at a local police station where he was being detained said no charges had been formally brought against him.

The drama began at dawn Friday at Cotonou port when the gendarmes of the Maritime Squadron intercepted a container from Brazil intended for COMON-CAJAF, a company which Sébastien Ajavon owns.

Inside the shipment, police say they seized 18 kilos of pure cocaine with an estimated value of about 9 billion CFA francs (around EUR 14 million). In the process, three company employees were arrested and placed in custody.

After he was alerted on the arrests, Ajavon called a press conference and denounced the incident as a set-up by rival businessmen.

“It seems that when we go into politics, there are shots that we receive. We receive hundreds, thousands of containers. How do they know that in a single container there were drugs? It is the way thugs operate,” Ajavon said before he was arrested by police.

With its porous borders and corruptible officials, West Africa has for more than a decade been a major transit point for cocaine grown in Latin America on its way to Europe.

Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested a Lagos-based pastor, Daniel Lanre Akintola, for being in possession heroin.

Akintola, 43, was found with the 1.978kg of heroin concealed in a false bottom of his luggage, after he had disembarked from a flight, at the Akanu Ibiam International Airport (AIIA), Enugu.

Akintola, who claimed ownership of the bag containing the HOIN, said that he was returning from a pastors' conference.

“I am a pastor with Gospel Faith Mission International, Olayemi Assembly, Ipaja, Lagos. I am from Oyo State. I attended a ministers' conference in Uganda. This bag where heroin was found is my bag but I am a pastor and not a drug trafficker,” he told the NDLEA officials.

He, however, could not produce any evidence that he actually attended a pastors' conference in Uganda. Besides, he also did not give any reason for leaving Entebbe, Uganda en-route Addis Ababa to Enugu.

Another suspect, Onwuegbusi Tochukwu Victor, 48, was also arrested yesterday by NDLEA operatives at the airport, for alleged drug trafficking. He was found with 51.5kg of ephedrine inside his luggage.

Victor, from Anambra State, told the operatives that he was asked to take the bag of ephedrine to Mozambique for a fee of 2,500 dollars.

Richard McDonald Tour Guide

An anti-drug operation in Belize City on Monday night yielded 22.5 pounds of heroin in a taxi, while police in Seine Bight village earlier that same day resulted in the discovery of just over four pounds of marijuana.

The seizure in Belize City occurred on the Bel-China Bridge in a taxi car driven at the time by Giovanni Requena, 25, a resident of Belize City.

Police say the heroin was stashed in 12 parcrls in a black bag. They say that further investigations led to the detention of Richard McDonald, 39, a tour guide/operator of Hattieville Village.

Requena and McDonald have been arrested and charged with two counts of ‘possession of controlled drugs with the intent to supply’.

An alleged drug trafficking gang operating between East and West Africa has been busted at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, local media reported Thursday.

The suspects, Friday Ogbonna Icheogu, 43, Christian Chukwudi Icheogu, 36, both Nigerians; Mabada Zanaka Zamzam, alias Zam Nabadda, 36, and Charles Ejiku Gasper, 41, both Ugandans, were said to have been arrested in two separate operations, resulting in the seizure of 13 kilograms of heroin with a street value of over 1 million US dollars.

Ten parcels of the drug were reportedly discovered in an enamel bowl, while seven were found under the cushion of a baby pram.

Deputy Executive Secretary of Ghanas Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), Nii Lantey Blankson, told the state-run Daily Graphic that on March 8, 2015, officials from his outfit, acting on intelligence, arrested the Ugandan woman, Mabada Zanaka Zamzam, at the KIA.
He said Zamzam arrived at the KIA around 11 a.m. on that day onboard an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Uganda.

But unknown to Zamzam, officials of NACOB had mounted surveillance on her.
Blankson said after she had picked her two pieces of luggage and headed outside, she was met by the two Nigerians at the entrance of the arrival hall.

The three persons exchanged pleasantries and thereafter Ogbonna introduced himself as the contact person Zamzam was supposed to meet. Thereafter, one of the Nigerians stopped a taxi and put the luggage in it but before they could enter the taxi, NACOB officials arrested them.

Blankson said a thorough search conducted on the luggage carried by the woman revealed 10 parcels of a substance suspected to be heroin which had been concealed beneath 10 enamel bowls.
He said the 10 parcels had a gross weight of three kilograms and upon interrogation Zamzam informed the officials that she had been sent by someone whose name she gave only as Joel, a Nigerian living in Uganda, to bring the travelling bag containing the bowls to a friend in Accra who would meet her at the airport.

He said on March 16, 2015, Gasper was also picked up on arrival at the KIA on board an Ethiopian Airline flight from Entebbe through Addis Ababa to Accra.
Blankson said while profiling Gasper, it was realized that he had two baggage tags with the numbers ET438241 and ET438242 stuck at the back of his passport.
He said Gasper had earlier told NACOB officials who arrested him that he had only a hand luggage and denied any knowledge of the bag tags.
Officials then escorted him to the luggage department where a black bag and a box containing a baby?s pram had been left on the carousel.

When it was checked, it bore the name of the suspect and matched the tags behind his passport.
A thorough search in the bag and the baby?s pram revealed seven large parcels of heroin, with an approximate weight of 10 kilograms, concealed beneath the bag and the baby?s pram.
Upon interrogation, Gasper claimed the two items had been given to him in Uganda by a Nigerian whose name he gave only as Obi to be delivered to an unknown person in Accra.

Tonight, the Anti Drug Unit has charged four Belizeans after officers made a major heroin bust in Corozal town last night. How large? 7News has confirmed that they intercepted more than 40 pounds of the lethal drug - the largest such bust in Belize's history. That quantity of the drug has a street value in the vicinity of 5 million US dollars.

The drugs were found in three bags on the back seat of a white Chevrolet Tahoe with Belize City plates. They added up to 15 parcels of Heroin along with one small piece. The total weight is 19.621 Kilograms or 43 pounds.

Details of the actual circumstances of the bust are sketchy at this time, but 7News has confirmed that the ADU - acting on intelligence, intercepted four persons, who were believed to be northbound to Mexico. They were at a at the entrance to Corozal town.

They are 32 year old Jose Antonio Lara a fisherman/Tour guide of Julio Street San Pedro, 30 year old Lenon Leonardo Tillett a BEL contractor of #20 Ebony street Belize City also of College Road Corozal Town 42 year old Gerardo Beraldo Allen, a tour guide of Back street Caye Caulker and 35 year old Heirder Martin Perez an administrative assistant for Hol Chan Marine Reserve of Escalante Subdivision San Pedro Town. Perez is the holder of a licensed 9 mm pistol which was in his possession loaded with 13 live rounds.

A crew from an Australian warship has seized more than 400kg of heroin from pirate smugglers off the Somalia coast during a daring raid.

The drugs were found on a vessel when navy personnel from HMAS Darwin swooped.
The boarding party discovered the contraband hidden in 20 bags on a motorised dhow, 44 nautical miles off Somalia.

Tuesday's bust follows an even bigger haul where more than a tonne of heroin was found in a smuggling vessel off the coast of Kenya in April. This is the second find of its kind in a month. Last month, more than a tonne of heroin - worth $290 million - was also found by HMAS Darwin on a smuggling boat in Kenya. That 1032kg haul was a record find, according to the Department of Defence, and was found in a dhow in the Indian Ocean, about 27 nautical miles east of Mombasa, Kenya.

According to protocol, the seized drugs are tossed overboard and smugglers are released.

Combined Maritime Forces Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Regina has seized over 130kg of high-grade heroin off the coast of Tanzania.

The illicit narcotics were seized after HMCS Regina intercepted and boarded a suspect dhow approximately 100 nautical miles east of Zanzibar Island, while under the command of Combined Task Force (CTF) 150.

HMCS Regina’s embarked ‘Sea King’ helicopter initially observed a suspect dhow in the Indian Ocean.

As the dhow continued her westerly passage, bound for east Africa, HMCS Regina closed and boarded the vessel.

An extensive search by HMCS Regina’s boarding party revealed the carefully concealed narcotics, which later tested positive for heroin.

The narcotics were catalogued before samples were taken for further analysis and the remainder destroyed. Commander of CTF 150, Commodore Daryl Bates, Royal Australian Navy, said:
“The Royal Canadian Navy has again proven to be a highly motivated and effective power in the Combined Maritime Forces arsenal.

“I congratulate the crew in HMCS Regina, who have certainly earned this success. They have worked tirelessly since taking over from their sister ship, HMCS Toronto, in February.

“In conjunction with the recent efforts of warships from the French, United States and Australian Navies, the Canadian Navy continues to have a real impact on smuggling operations in this region.

“Countering narcotics smuggling continues to be one of our highest priorities, and we are working closely with regional partners to disrupt the activities of those who wish to use the maritime environment to move illicit cargo.

“Since January this year, over 1455kg of heroin bound for east Africa has been intercepted by CMF.”

CTF 150 is one of three task forces operated by Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). Its mission is to promote maritime security in order to counter terrorist acts and related illegal activities, which terrorists use to fund or conceal their movements.

CMF is a multi-national naval partnership, which exists to promote security, stability and prosperity across approximately 2.5 million square miles of international waters, which encompass some of the world’s most important shipping lanes.

During a control operation, the customs services seized 62,660 psychotropic pills and 29 kg and 92 grams of cocaine hidden in the luggage of a Moroccan expatriate, it said, adding that the drug trafficker was boarding a Morocco-registered coach coming from Spain.

The arrested was handed to the judiciary police, under the supervision of the public prosecutor’s office, to complete the investigation before bringing him to justice, it said.

French customs officers have seized more than two and a half tons of cocaine off the French Caribbean island of Martinique in two separate anti-drug operations last week.

In the first operation, which was carried out Wednesday night, officials seized approximately 2.5 tons of drugs with an estimated street value of 318 million Euros from a sailboat off the island's coast. The effort brought a two-year-long international investigation to a close. If cut and sold in the UK the haul would have had a likely potential street value in excess of £300 million.

The second, smaller-scale drug bust took place on Friday, when customs officers found a further 485 pounds of cocaine on board a Guyanese tugboat, in a joint operation carried out by France and the Joint Inter-agency Task Force South, a US agency specialising in multinational operations against drug trafficking.

After Wednesday's operation, France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin and Budget Secretary Christian Eckert released a joint statement describing the drugs seizure as "historic."

Speaking on France 2 Sunday, a spokesman for France's National Directorate of Intelligence and Customs Investigations  said the bust made on stormy seas was "the biggest cocaine seizure in the entire 200-year history of French customs" and "one of France's 10 largest cocaine seizures
anywhere in the world."

According to the DNRED, the yacht named the Silandra was allegedly headed to Europe when customs officers stopped the 20-meter vessel around 9pm Wednesday night.

Officers allegedly found the cocaine packed in 80 packages that were littered on the cabin floor, according to French television France 2.

The vessel — which was falsely sailing under a US flag — was purchased for 500,000 euros ($536,000) by a Spanish national who was a known member of Basque separatist group ETA in the '80s, French daily Le Parisien reported.

On April 13, the Silandra reportedly stopped in Saint Lucia, an island south of Martinique, where traffickers on board loaded the drugs onto the vessel. Two days later, on Wednesday April 15, the sailboat set off on its transatlantic journey, only to be stopped that night, 125 miles off the coast of Martinique.

Three people — including one Venezuelan and two Spanish nationals — were arrested in the operation. One of the Spaniards is an ex-member of ETA and the other is a known drug trafficker, according to French radio Europe 1. It is unclear in reports whether either of the Spanish traffickers arrested is the same Spanish national who purchased the boat. The identity of the Venezuelan is unknown.

The drugs were reportedly destroyed Saturday, public prosecutor Eric Corbaux said.

In the second operation Friday, the Guyanese tugboat was intercepted some 400 miles to the east of the Caribbean islands, according to local news channel France 1, and its four occupants were taken into police custody.

France has already retrieved nearly 4 tons of illegal seaborne drugs since the beginning of 2015. Last year, the country's global anti-narcotics operations hauled in 7.2 tons of cocaine. In November 2014 a UK-bound yacht carrying an estimated 250 kilos of cocaine was seized off Martinique, in another joint operation. Two men from Jersey were later jailed for a total of 17 years.

Other French agencies have also been involved in drug operations throughout the years, with some seizures larger than the recent "historic" bust carried out by Customs. In November 2006, the French Navy seized 4.7 tons of cocaine stashed aboard a Panamanian freighter off the coast of Martinique.

On 13 October 2016, the Cameroonian customs seized a cargo of 100 kg of methamphetamines at the Douala International Airport, we learned from official sources. The cargo packaged in 20 boxes belonging to two Cameroonian nationals, who were trying to send it to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.

This record seizure comes only a few days after the official installation of two anti-traffic units at the Yaoundé and Douala airports. The mission of these two structures co-financed by the European Union, as part of the “Airport Communication Project” (AIRCOP), and Japan; is to fight against drug trafficking and other illicit activities in the above-mentioned airports.

On september the 2nd 2016 French customs seized a record haul of the drug methamphetamine disguised as cereals from Cameroon at Roissy airport in Paris with a street value of about 3.8 million euros ($4.26 million), they said on Friday.

The drug weighed about 51 kg (112.44 lb), making it the biggest single seizure of the drug on French territory.

In a statement, the customs department said customs officers checked two boxes that had been declared to contain food coming from the Cameroon capital of Yaounde en route to Malaysia.

"In the boxes, they found sachets of cereals including several which were unusually heavy. Opening them, methamphetamine crystals were discovered wrapped in aluminium foil," it said. It did not say if any arrests had been made.

Drug networks are increasingly using West and Central Africa as a transit point for drugs from Latin America to Europe, the United States and Asia. They also use the region as production zone for meth because of weak controls on imports of meth ingredients. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says the highly addictive methamphetamine is increasingly popular in East and Southeast Asia. One kilo of it costs around $1,500 to make in West Africa but sells for around $150,000 in Japan.

In 2015, French customs seized nearly 513 kg of amphetamines including 96.5 kilograms of methamphetamine. ($1 = 0.8924 euros)