Another large consignment of cocaine with a total weight of 700 kg was detained by FSB operatives in Russia. Recall that last week more than 200 kg of an elite drug was seized in St. Petersburg. What is behind the failures of the Latin American drug cartels and why the barons are stubbornly trying to push their cargo into Russia, Izvestia experts figured out.
Through Russia with love
Three foreigners – two Colombians and an EU citizen – were detained in Russia for smuggling and illegal cocaine trafficking. Intelligence officers recorded an attempt to sell a large consignment of drugs from Latin America to Moscow. It was established that earlier a large cargo of a substance with a total weight of at least 699 kg had entered Russia. The task of the alleged criminals was to sell part of the goods in Russia and transport the rest abroad – to the European market.
“According to experts, the wholesale value of the confiscated batch on the Russian black market exceeds 2.5 billion rubles. Retail sales could bring the drug syndicate a profit totaling at least 6 billion rubles, ”the message on the website of the FSB of Russia says. The service stressed that since 2019, a significant number of international shipments of cocaine and heroin, destined primarily for European consumers, have been stopped.
A particularly large amount of cocaine starts with a weight of one and a half kilograms, so the detainees are likely to be charged with attempted drug smuggling and their sale on an especially large scale, explains lawyer Konstantin Kudryashov. Since there is no life sentence for attempted crime, detainees face up to 15 years in prison on each of the two charges.
No regard for politics
Special services of all countries of the world cooperate in the fight against drug smuggling and international drug trafficking, as a rule, regardless of the political situation in the world, says lawyer Kudryashov.
– The order of such interaction is secret. Also, according to the law, information about persons embedded in organized criminal groups or providing assistance to law enforcement agencies on a confidential basis – about agents of special services – is a state secret. Therefore, whether the detention was the implementation of operational information received from abroad, or the result of operational development and the work of agents within the country, we are unlikely to find out, he says.
Recall that a week earlier it became known about the detention of two Russians in St. Petersburg while trying to transport another contraband cargo of cocaine weighing more than 200 kg. The police assume that the banned substance was thrown into Russia by sea along with a cargo of bananas. Another superconsignment of cocaine was arrested in March by Norwegian police in the port of Oslo – detectives realized the information of a colleague from Germany. The cargo in each case was hidden in containers of fruit.
Experiment time
An expert on international drug trafficking, retired Colonel of Justice Sergei Pelikh believes that the increase in attempts to illegally import large consignments of cocaine into Russia is the flip side of changes in food logistics.
– The growth of imports from new partners in South America due to foreign policy realities inevitably carries the danger of running into drug dealers. Now Russian companies do not have the opportunity to thoroughly check counterparties from countries that are ready to trade with us – we need to ensure an uninterrupted supply of products that the population is used to. On the one hand, the open-door policy in this area has given a phenomenal choice of fruits under the sanctions and maintaining low prices. On the other hand, this is the risk of falling for an unscrupulous supplier who is friends with the cartels and gives them the opportunity to transport drugs to Russia in their goods, the expert explains.
Coke is getting cheaper
According to Sergei Pelikh, the wholesale price of cocaine may be slightly lower than the officially announced one.
– Probably, the calculations were made on the level of prices before the pandemic. Now we live in other realities – cocaine has seriously fallen in price. Plus, it is worth considering the discount due for such a volume. If earlier it was possible to talk about the price of $35-45 thousand per 1 kg, today it is $21-35 thousand. In my opinion, 2.5 billion rubles is not the cost of a wholesale lot, but the amount that all participants in the drug chain could gain after sale to the end user.
However, according to Izvestia’s source in the Moscow police, the retail price of cocaine in Moscow can reach up to 17,000 rubles per 1 year. With such arithmetic, the FSB figures are even underestimated. The retail value of a batch (excluding dilution by intermediaries) can reach up to 10-12 billion rubles. However, it should be borne in mind that the price for an ordinary consumer in Moscow is higher than in the same St. Petersburg, not to mention other megacities.
Sergey Pelikh is skeptical about the version that cocaine from Russia could go further to Europe.
– As far as I know, such a cargo may well be sold in Russia. All these large deliveries are the result of agreements concluded during the World Cup in 2018. Then our criminal clans and Latin Americans managed to reach serious agreements, – says the specialist.
You say Colombia, you mean Mexico
There is every reason to believe that the volume of cocaine produced is seriously increasing. The latest trend in the criminal world of the New World is the crossing of the Mexican and Colombian drug mafia. If a few years ago the North American Republic was only a transit zone on the way of Colombian coke to the States, today Mexican organized crime can be safely called the beneficiary of the cocaine business. According to the UN, over the past decade, the northern neighbor has managed to turn from logistics partners and investors into owners and administrators of production. They also monitor the quality of the produced substance on the spot.
The main players today are the Sinaloa Cartel and the so-called Jalisco New Generation Cartel. These criminal communities are growing and getting stronger. They have acquired structures where professional agronomists work – they are sent to Colombia to improve the volume and quality of the crop (we are talking about coca leaves).
In addition, Mexican bosses have already been detained by Colombian security forces. The national police said that drug lords (among them internationally wanted Carlos Omar Felix and Silvano Francisco Mariano) coordinated work with Colombian satellites to manufacture and export fentanyl.
Do not go to Africa for a walk
Meanwhile, the fall in cocaine prices has provoked humanitarian tensions in Colombia itself – farmers employed on plantations are getting poorer and even starving, Al Jazeera writes. The fact is that the cultivation of coca in some regions of the country is still the only means of subsistence for a large part of the rural population.
During the heyday of the drug mafia in the republic, many peasants abandoned the cultivation of food crops in favor of drug-containing bushes. For 2021, as calculated by the UN, over 200 thousand hectares were allocated for coca in the country (slightly less than the area of \u200b\u200bmodern Moscow). There is an opinion that cartels go for broke, seriously risking goods in search of new logistical ways to solve the problem of finding a buyer and sell the goods.
The cocaine cartels also suffered a serious fiasco on the Black Continent in the spring. In Guinea, a giant consignment of 1.5 tons of the substance was arrested. A cargo of 60 bags of 25 kg each was found on a Sierra Leone-flagged vessel in early April, and 10 crew members (four Sierra Leoneans, three Ghanaians and three Guineans) were detained.
Experts from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime have previously reported that African countries are gradually turning from transit zones into cocaine consuming countries. Consumption is high in West and Central Africa. From 2019 to 2022, at least 57 tons of cocaine were seized en route to these regions: Cape Verde (16.6 tons), Senegal (4.7 tons), Benin (3.9 tons).
– The countries of West Africa are the first logistics hub on the route of cocaine from Latin America across the Atlantic, which explains the high tonnage of seized drugs in Africa. The shortest route. Then the cargo ships go north. Part of the cocaine ends up in North Africa (primarily Morocco), from where it is transported via Gibraltar to the EU. Part of the stream, the one with fruit, goes around Europe and enters Russia through the northern seas.