Andean Group - March 2011 (ISSN 1741-4466)

A drug-smuggling scandal implicating a top security official and former anti-narcotics czar under President Evo Morales has raised questions about the degree of penetration by organized crime in Bolivia's security and political institutions. The scandal follows a recent government admission that Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel is operating in Bolivia - the latest sign of the growing international drug gang presence in the country. With Washington already linking both developments to Morales' ejection of the US Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) in November 2008, the situation is attracting growing concern from Bolivia's neighbours - and Brazil in particular - which, in the absence of the US, is stepping up its aid.

René Sanabria, a police general, the director of a counter-narcotics intelligence unit at the Bolivian interior ministry's intelligence centre (Cigein) and former head of Bolivia's counter-narcotics force, Felcn (2007-2009) was arrested, together with a civilian, Juan Forondo Acero, at Panama's Tocumen Airport on 24 February in possession of 60 kilos of cocaine. The operation was the result of efforts by the DEA and Panamanian authorities, which reportedly had been tracking Sanabria's activities since August 2010, following the detection of a consignment of 144kg of cocaine sent from Arica, northern Chile, to Panama, for onward distribution to the US.

In line with an international arrest warrant issued by the district court for the Southern District of Florida for “conspiracy" and “importing" more than 5kg of cocaine in December 2010, Sanabria, together with Forondo, was sent to the US. Two other Bolivians, Milton Sánchez Pantoja (a colonel and ex Felcn regional director in Cochabamba) and his brother, Jorge Sánchez Pantoja, also face international arrest warrants. The former has been detained in Bolivia, while his brother remains at large. A press release from the Florida court accused the four of producing and exporting “bulk kilogram loads of cocaine from Bolivia to the US." It continued: “Foronda-Azero and Jorge Sanchez-Pantoja allegedly agreed to sell one hundred kilograms of cocaine to purported members of a Colombian drug trafficking organization that claimed to want to distribute cocaine in the Miami, Florida area and other parts of the United States". Aside from Milton Sánchez Pantoja, two other senior police officers (a major and a captain) have been arrested in Bolivia for their alleged involvement in Sanabria's organization, with 15 officials suspected in total.

A growing problem
High level official involvement in the drugs trade is hardly new in Bolivia - as was most notably the case in the so-called 'cocaine coup' of 1980, which brought Luis Garcí­a Meza [1980-81] to power and saw his interior minister, Luis Arce Gómez convicted of drug-trafficking in the US in 1991. However the most recent US International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), released on 3 March 2011, notes that “there are no proven cases of senior GOB officials encouraging or facilitating the illicit production or distribution of narcotic[s]_or the laundering of proceeds from illegal drug transactions". Sanabria is the highest ranking senior official to be accused of such charges under Morales, who has sought to downplay the presence of international drug gangs in the country and, with it, the possibility of institutional corruption. This no doubt stems from continued US opposition to his government's policy of “coca sí­, cocaí­na no", which distinguishes between the illegal narcotic and the raw coca leaf, an important symbol of indigenous culture. (Current legislation allows up to 12,000ha of coca cultivation for traditional consumption and other legal uses, although Morales has raised the tolerated limit to 20,000ha).

With Morales having only acknowledged possible links between Bolivia's drug clans and international organizations in July 2010 [RA-10-11], with reference to Mexico's Los Zetas and Brazil's Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), Sanabria's arrest also came on the heels of the admission on 17 February by the heads of the Felcn and national police, Gonzalo Quezada and General Oscar Nina, respectively, that the Colombian Norte del Valle cartel was present in Bolivia. This followed reports of the so-called 'narco-plane scandal' in which two Argentine brothers, Gustavo and Eduardo Juliá, were arrested in Barcelona, Spain, when they landed a plane loaded with 944kg of cocaine at El Prat airport on 2 January. According to Quezada, two Colombian nationals, including the suspected link in Bolivia for the Norte de Valle cartel, Jesús Marí­a Osorio Tórrez, were key in getting the cocaine base paste from Colombia to Bolivia, where it was refined, and then passed on to the Juliá brothers. Osorio is now in a La Paz jail, together with René Navia, a Bolivian and former Felcn official who worked at Santa Cruz's Viru Viru airport. The Morales government is currently investigating possible links between Navia and Sanabria.

Neighbourly concern
The latest information from Washington's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), released in December 2010, suggests Bolivia's potential production capacity of pure cocaine remained stable at 195 tonnes in 2009. The most recent report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated a 1% increase in net coca cultivation for Bolivia - which after Colombia and Peru is the world's third largest producer of cocaine - in 2009 over 2008 (to 30,900 hectares). However other incidents indicative of increasing international narco-trafficking activity (see sidebar) continue to attract concern from Bolivia's neighbours. Brazil in particular has stepped up cooperation efforts following the ejection of the DEA in 2008. In addition to the launch of a bilateral plan 'Bra-Bo' in January 2009, the threat to Brazil posed by porous borders has led to enhanced border cooperation.  In December last, Bolivian troops were deployed to the border in response to a major operation by the Brazilian authorities against drug gangs in northern Rio de Janeiro. These efforts look set to continue with Operação Sentinela, launched by the Brazilians in March last year. Among other areas, it targets five states which border Bolivia - Amazonas, Mato Grosso do Sul, Acre, Rondônia and Mato Grosso.

In the 2010 Brazilian electoral campaign, José Serra, the presidential candidate for the opposition Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, controversially stated that “80% to 90% of all cocaine entering Brazil comes via Bolivia", and accused the Morales government of being “complicit" in the problem.

That security is fast replacing gas as the driving force behind Brazil's interest in its neighbour was also suggested during a recent visit to La Paz by Brazil's deputy justice minister, Luiz Paulo Barreto, who announced that preparations were underway for a “new phase" of bilateral anti-narcotics cooperation. As well as laying the groundwork for a meeting of the Bolivia-Brazil joint commission on drugs, scheduled for 28-29 March in La Paz, Barreto's trip also yielded various announcements: One was that an Israeli-built unmanned aerial aircraft (UAV), bought by Brazil from Israel, could be up and running by September 2011 to monitor the joint border, as part of anti-drug efforts. A further two UAV aircraft have been purchased for the same purpose. Also unveiled were plans to establish a police training centre in Bolivia and to cooperate on anti-money laundering efforts.

• Araujo
  The other major case which recently exposed the problem of institutional corruption was that involving a former police captain Orlando Araujo Becerra, 'Menono' who is being held in preventive custody for alleged links to a May 2010 shoot-out in which three Bolivians and three Serbians died. The latter were all said to be bodyguards of William Rosales Suárez, the local ringleader of a drug gang, who was kidnapped by another group of Colombian narco-traffickers presumed to be operating from Paraguay [RA-10-05].