Operation discovers Colombia-Australia corridor for the narcotics market
Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 28, 2024, p. 27
Bogota. Authorities from more than 60 countries seized 225 tons of cocaine during a global mega-operation against drug trafficking and identified a new mafia corridor to take the drugs to Australia, the Colombian Navy reported yesterday.
Security agencies from the United States, Brazil, Spain and the Netherlands, among other nations, participated in the 45-day operation, carried out between October and November.
The fourteenth edition of the naval campaign Orion managed to seize 1,400 tons of narcotics, including 225 tons of cocaine hydrochloride and 128 tons of marijuana, said Vice Admiral of the Colombian Navy, Orlando Enrique Grisales.
The military high command highlighted the seizure near Clipperton Island, in the Pacific, of a semi-submersible that was heading to Australia with cocaine produced in Colombia.
This operation and other findings led authorities to conclude that there is a new line of drug trafficking between both countries with modern vessels.
Semisubmersibles have the enough fuel to get from Colombia to Australia without the need to resupply in the ocean.
According to Grisales, a kilogram of cocaine is sold in Australia for up to $240,000. In the United States, for example, its price ranges between 33 thousand and 40 thousand dollars.
The countries that participated in the operation Orion They also identified alliances between criminal groups from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru with mafias from Europe and Oceania. This is an organizational change in the global cocaine market.
It is not a pyramidal structure like the cartels were in their time, but today they are organized crime networks that associateGrisales explained.
In the operation, more than 400 arrests as part of the newly created Orion International Judicial Network, supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Colombia is the largest exporter of cocaine in the world. In 2023, production soared 53 percent to reach 2,600 tons annually, according to UN reports.
