The European Union has stepped up support to Latin America and the Caribbean, aware that growing alliances between European and Latin American criminal syndicates present national security threats on both sides of the Atlantic.

InSight Crime has been working with the European Union (EU) to profile different criminal structures that provide services to high-risk criminal networks operating in Latin America and towards Europe, managing different criminal economies, foremost among them the cocaine trade. You can find our work on these networks here.

InSight Crime interviewed Marc Reina-Tortosa, an executive manager at El PACCTO, the EU initiative supporting the strengthening of the rule of law and the fight against transnational organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships.

InSight Crime (IC): What is the idea behind the creation of EL PACCTO?

Marc Reina-Tortosa (MRT): The will to create EL PACCTO arose from the EU-CELAC Summit in 2015 where the heads of state of Latin American and Caribbean countries, along with the EU and its member states, agreed to launch a bi-regional program to assist Latin American justice and security institutions. The initiative is in its second phase, which was launched in November 2023 and has enlarged both its geographic scope, including the Caribbean partners, as well as its strategic, tactical, and operational mandate.

IC: What is the idea behind the commissioning and publishing of this report on high-risk criminal networks?

MRT: EL PACCTO has facilitated the creation of two high-level dialogue cycles on security and justice, the Latin American Committee on Internal Security (CLASI) and the Shared Political Cycle on Justice matters (C-JUST). These dialogues are led by Latin American security ministers and regional organizations, who determined at a meeting in Brussels in June 2024 that the identification and dismantling of high-risk criminal networks, operating on both sides of the Atlantic, were priorities. 

It is within this framework that EL PACCTO 2.0, together with the EU EMPACT (European Multidisciplinary Platform against Criminal Threats), launched the mapping and profiling study of the 28 most important criminal syndicates in the Latin American region in conjunction with InSight Crime.

The idea is to improve the knowledge that both the EU and Latin America have about the threats that these criminal groups pose to the rule of law, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study gives us a snapshot of the current state of play, which can change very quickly as we are talking about criminal networks that expand, fragment or be partially dismantled in short periods of time. 

IC: Is there a recognition that transnational organized crime from Latin America and the Caribbean presents a national security threat to the European Union?

MRT: Transnational organized crime is a global threat, not only to the European Union, as it seeks territorial control, infiltration of state structures and to spread terror and chaos wherever it operates. We have seen this in many parts of the world and the EU is not a region free from this threat. 

This is why the EU Security Union Strategy 2020-2025 includes the fight against organized crime and terrorism, as well as hybrid threats, as a priority for the European Union. Furthermore, in recent years the EU has developed a Strategic Compass for Security and Defense, which highlights the threat posed by organized crime to the EU and other regions, including drug trafficking and other serious crimes. In addition, the EU has been strengthening internal legislation in the fight against organized crime. 

From my point of view, there is a clear threat to the EU and its member states from transnational organized crime. The impact of organized crime on the daily lives of Europeans has increased dramatically in recent years. From the discovery of containers specifically adapted to become places of interrogation or torture in southern Netherlands, to the hiring of Colombian or Swedish hitmen for assassinations in the Costa del Sol in Spain, to the actions of criminal groups in the streets of Brussels with automatic rifles, or the murder of journalists in Slovakia, Malta, or the Netherlands. These facts indicate that the criminal threat in Europe is more vivid than we would like.

One of the threats that we must take more seriously with regard to organized crime is its ability to infiltrate and corrupt state structures and institutions. This is not something new, it occurs in all countries, but I believe that the threat is much more serious than we might think. A recent example, published in the Spanish press, is the arrest of the head of the money laundering investigation unit of the Spanish National Police, accused of accepting multimillion-euro bribes from Western Balkan mafias to help introduce drugs from Latin America into Europe. This is obviously an isolated case that does not jeopardize the work of Spanish law enforcement agencies, but which, at the political and institutional level, should make us review internal controls. In other cases, organized crime has infiltrated European ports in order to facilitate and expedite the entry of illicit goods such as drugs and timber.

IC: Do you see a growing role of European criminals in global cocaine networks?

MRT: I don’t know if we can state, for the moment, that the role of European criminal networks is growing globally. Nevertheless, it is clear that we are seeing activity by some organizations in the Western Balkans, the Italian mafia organization the ’Ndrangheta or the Mocro Maffia. The latter dominates around one third of the European cocaine market and operates in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain, among other countries. These groups have expanded their connections and spheres of action, particularly in terms of drug trafficking. They are working closely with criminal groups in Ecuador and Colombia. There are connections between the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC) and European criminal organizations.

Today, European criminal networks have a presence, or close criminal connections, in transit and departure nations such as Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Cocaine trafficking routes vary rapidly and have spread throughout South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. 

The volume of drug seizures in European ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, or Algeciras in the last three years show that there is a greater flow of cocaine towards Europe. However, this has been accompanied by greater cooperation, coordination, exchange, and processing of information between European judicial, police and customs authorities and their Latin American counterparts.

Simply trying to fight drug trafficking in the same repressive way as it has been done for 40 years will not solve the current situation. In fact, it is getting worse over time. If I may make a very personal reflection on this, we Europeans need to accept that we have a serious problem with drug use but also with other illicit commodities such as timber. For example, deforestation and trafficking of timber to Romania from the Amazon remains without a clear solution. At the same time, the production of cocaine in Latin America and of synthetic drugs in some EU countries are at record levels. EU-funded initiatives such as EL PACCTO, the Seaport Cooperation Project (SEACOP) and COPOLAD, seek to provide solutions to these problems in a technical and strategic way. However, a more operational and complementary approach of funding, the establishment of dedicated operational task forces in key countries, budgetary and financial support to partner countries linked to achieving specific results, or even decentralized international legal cooperation mechanisms, as it is done in the EU or the United States, could yield returns in security and justice for the EU, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

#border #crime #latinamerica #news