Category Archives: Drugs trade

Hipólito Mora, vigilante crusader against Mexico’s drug cartels, killed in ambush

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One of the leaders of the violence-scarred country’s ‘self-defense’ movement was cut down in rural Michoacán

One of the founders of Mexico’s “self-defense” movement, the lime farmer turned vigilante crusader Hipólito Mora, has been murdered in an ambush – the latest macabre chapter in the country’s unabating crime conflict.

Guillermo Valencia, a politician from the violence-stricken state of Michoacán, where Mora helped launch a rural revolt against narco-traffickers 10 years ago, announced the news on Twitter.

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Amazon facing ‘urgent’ drug crisis after gutting of protections, says narcotics chief

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Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation

The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.

Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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US charges Chinese individuals and firms over fentanyl chemical trafficking

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Four companies and eight individuals charged with shipping enough precursor chemicals into US to kill ‘25m Americans’

The US justice department has filed criminal charges against four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and eight individuals over allegations they illegally trafficked the chemicals used to make fentanyl, a highly addictive painkiller that has fueled the opioid crisis in the United States.

It is the first time the United States has charged Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals inside the United States, rather than shipping them to Mexico, the origin of most of the fentanyl found in the country.

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Peruvian police seize 58kg of cocaine bearing pictures of Nazi flag

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Drugs found in shipment said to be destined for Belgium also had the name Hitler printed on them

Peruvian anti-drug police have seized 58 one-kilo packages of cocaine destined for Belgium bearing a picture of a Nazi flag on the outside and the name Hitler printed in low relief.

The discovery occurred in the port of Paita, on Peru’s northern Pacific coast close to its border with Ecuador.

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US senator denounced as ‘profoundly ignorant man’ over remarks on Mexico

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John Kennedy’s comments about Mexicans ‘eating cat food’ came as he urged the US military to enter country to ‘stop the cartels’

Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.

The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.

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US charges 28 members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel including El Chapo’s sons

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Charges filed against cartel leaders, alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, traffickers and others in fentanyl investigation

The US justice department has charged 28 members of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, including sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a sprawling fentanyl-trafficking investigation.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the charges on Friday alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief, Anne Milgram, and other top federal prosecutors. The charges were filed against cartel leaders, as well alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and weapons traffickers.

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Mexican president bemoans ‘rude’ US fentanyl pressure in plea to Xi Jinping

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US

Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.

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Mexican president blames US fentanyl crisis on ‘lack of hugs’ among families

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador cites a lack ‘of hugs and embraces’ for 70,000 annual overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioid

Mexico’s president has said that US families were to blame for the fentanyl overdose crisis because they don’t hug their kids enough.

The comment by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador caps a week of provocative statements from him about the crisis caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid trafficked by Mexican cartels that has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States.

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Mexico’s former drugs tsar Genaro Garcia Luna convicted for aiding El Chapo cartel

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Garcia Luna took millions in bribes from Sinaloa gang, Brooklyn corruption trial told

A former Mexican law enforcement official once in charge of the fight against drug traffickers has been convicted at a US corruption trial over his ties to the Sinaloa cartel.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Genaro Garcia Luna accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the cartel once run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in exchange for protection from arrest, safe passage for cocaine shipments and tipoffs about forthcoming law enforcement operations.

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British organised crime boss arrested in Thailand

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Richard Wakeling, 55, had been on the run since he fled the UK before his trial for drug smuggling in 2018

A British organised crime boss has been arrested in Thailand after being on the run for five years.

Richard Wakeling, 55, from Brentwood, Essex, tried to import £8m of liquid amphetamine into the UK in April 2016.

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Myanmar opium production surges since coup, UN finds

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Conflict and economic hardship force farmers to rely on opium, with poppy cultivation rising by 33% in 2022

Production of opium has flourished in Myanmar since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by a third in the past year, according to a UN report.

In 2022, in the first full growing season since the military wrested control from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, Myanmar saw a 33% increase in the cultivation area to 40,100 hectares, according to the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime released on Thursday.

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Ex-Mexico security chief’s trial poised to lift lid on US and Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’

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Genaro García Luna, accused of accepting millions in bribes from cartels, in trial that could implicate officials on both sides of border

One of Mexico’s most powerful former officials will stand trial in the US this week, charged with accepting million-dollar bribes from a violent cartel in a case with profound political implications that could expose the inner workings of the “war on drugs” on both sides of the border.

Genaro García Luna, a former head of Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI who went on to lead the country’s security ministry, was arrested in Texas in 2019, charged with conspiring to traffic cocaine and lying to the US government.

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Sinaloa cartel launches violent response as Mexico recaptures El Chapo’s son

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Ovidio Guzmán’s arrest on Thursday prompted heavy fighting from cartel gunmen in the city of Culiacán

Mexican authorities have captured Ovidio Guzmán, a son of incarcerated drugs kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, prompting a wave of retaliatory attacks from cartel gunmen in the northern city of Culiacán.

After a night of violence, gunmen exchanged fire with security forces, blocking roads with burning vehicles and shooting at army helicopters and police aeroplanes bringing reinforcements to the city.

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Brother of top Mexican drug lord arrested in Jalisco state

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Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, brother of cartel boss ‘El Mencho’, is third member of family to be arrested by Mexican authorities

The brother of one of Mexico’s top drug lords has been arrested, the Mexican military said, marking another high-profile capture amid a wave of violence that has overwhelmed the country.

Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, brother of the Jalisco New Generation cartel boss known as “El Mencho”, was arrested on Tuesday in the state of Jalisco by the Mexican army working with the national guard, the attorney general’s office and the national intelligence agency.

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Police foil alleged plot to import 30kg of methamphetamine into WA inside 3D printers

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Two men, alleged to be senior members of an international crime syndicate, face charges in Taiwan

Two men alleged to be senior members of an international crime syndicate have been charged in Taiwan over an alleged plot to import 30kg of methamphetamine into Western Australia hidden inside 3D printers.

It was revealed on Saturday that a 33-year-old man and a 36-year-old man were arrested in July and October this year after they were noticed by the Australian federal police as part of Operation Ironside.

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Colombia activist murders reach record high of 199 this year

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Human rights ombudsman decries ‘alarming and unprecedented figure’ owing to attacked by illegal armed groups tied to drug trade

Colombia will end the year with at least 199 killings of social leaders and human rights defenders – the highest level recorded – due to attacks by illegal armed groups in areas tied to the drug trade, the country’s human rights ombudsman has said.

In the first eleven months of the year, 199 people were murdered, higher than the total number of social leaders and rights defenders killed in 2021 and 2020, when 145 people and 182 people were killed respectively, the ombudsman said.

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30 tonnes of cocaine seized in raids against European ‘super cartel’

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Arrests made in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Dubai, including one ‘extremely big fish’

A “super-cartel” that controlled one-third of the cocaine trade in Europe has been taken down in six countries, police have said.

The EU police agency, Europol, announced that 49 suspects were arrested during the investigation, after raids in Europe and the United Arab Emirates targeting the cartel’s “command and control centre” and logistics network.

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Six men charged over international drug ring after Sydney dawn raids seize cash, cocaine and crypto

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NSW police say several transnational organised criminal networks were collaborating on drug imports

Six Sydney men have been charged and millions of dollars in cash and drugs seized after a multi-agency police investigation into an international drug ring.

Another man was arrested in Los Angeles as part of a joint operation with US homeland security.

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Arrest of mafia drug-trafficker on Europol’s most wanted list shrouded in mystery

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Bruno Carbone, right-hand man of mafia boss Raffaele Imperiale, was arrested at Rome airport amid claims he was extradited from Syria

The arrest of an Italian drug trafficker who was on Europol’s most wanted list is shrouded in mystery amid reports that he was captured and extradited from Syria.

Bruno Carbone, who had been on the run since 2003, was the right-hand man of Raffaele Imperiale, a drug broker for the Naples’ Camorra mafia who was arrested in Dubai in August 2021.

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‘Canberra ketamine’: new recreational drug discovered at Australian pill-testing service

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‘As far as we’re aware, this is the first detection of a new drug by a drug-checking service anywhere in the world,’ says professor


A new recreational drug dubbed CanKet, similar to ketamine but with unknown side effects, has been found by scientists at Australia’s first fixed pill-testing site.

CanTEST, a face-to-face drug-checking service, was launched in Canberra in August. Since then, almost 200 people have brought their recreational drugs in for analysis and advice based on the results. Some people choose to discard their drugs if the service finds they are laced with harmful or unexpected substances.

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