Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have been blocked, she says

Murders in Rosario center most affordable in at least a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have driven rising violence and caused a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is succeeding.

Argentina has actually grown in significance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down key waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi's hometown. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, in an unusual interview with international media, told Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and obstructing deliveries from making their method to end markets, including to Europe, where the cocaine market has expanded recently.

"We've had record cocaine seizures which's produced terrific respect for us regionally and also in Europe, due to the fact that (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was found in Europe," she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, adding that "naturally there might be some shipments that were unnoticed."

The security ministry validated that cocaine was not discovered in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a major European port in 2024. Reuters was not able to separately validate that.

Once a rival to Milei as the governmental prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal offense, tightening up borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and utilizing synthetic intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the most affordable in a minimum of the last years and down from nearly 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

"We decided to strike hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, adding that cooperation in between the nationwide and regional federal governments in Rosario had actually been a key aspect, in addition to the courts taking a tougher line. The federal government has likewise targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

"We eliminated the power that the drug managers had in the jails, who utilized the jails to keep their drug crime rings going. We isolated them," she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence expert and president of local think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on event intelligence with aiding the crime reduction.

"There was a concerted security effort by the nationwide government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence rather than simply having more police on the streets, which is a much more viable strategy," he said.

Bullrich has sent a costs to congress to develop a brand-new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has likewise gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

Last year, she hosted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of countless gang members in difficult conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have shown rows of tattooed and topless prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has actually been a little bit, let's say, less extreme. But when we have to be difficult, we are tough," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich told Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing visits to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and enhancing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being reinforced, consisting of by building a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more tracking of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "absence of control over the last few years," she said.

"We're going to start a program, a strategy, we're taking troops to the border location with Brazil," she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not immediately react to an ask for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently invited the idea of strengthening border security in a reaction to the procedures.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has brought Milei crucial center-ground assistance, said she had been won over to the libertarian's more comprehensive economic and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have actually divided Argentines but helped stabilize the country.

The 2 are previous competitors. During the election race, Milei labeled her a leftist "bomb-thrower" - a reference to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist movement - to which Bullrich had shot back that the previous economic pundit was emotionally unstable.

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and setiathome.berkeley.edu she and her bloc were assisting him as he seeks to gain seats in legislative mid-term elections set for wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de later this year.

"We're more libertarian than conservative now," she said.

(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott. Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and Daniel Ramos in La Paz; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O'Brien)