war against drugs

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Brazil nabs drug kingpin Luiz Carlos 'White Head' da Rocha...

Brazil arrests notorious drug kingpin Luiz Carlos da Rocha
Sat, 01 Jul 2017: The alleged cocaine maker had evaded police for 30 years with plastic surgery and fake names.

Brazilian police have captured a notorious drug kingpin who used plastic surgery to evade capture for almost 30 years. Luiz Carlos da Rocha - nicknamed "White Head" - is believed to be the leader of a massive cocaine empire in South America. Federal police said sentences handed down to Rocha amount to more than 50 years of prison time. Police said he was "a criminal who lived discreetly and in the shadows".

Luiz Carlos da Rocha was living under a fake name after cosmetic surgery, police said​

The drug kingpin had been living under the assumed name Vitor Luiz de Moraes. Agents compared old known photos of Rocha to the images of the new suspect, "and concluded that Luiz Carlos da Rocha and Vitor Luiz are the same person". Brazilian police said his organisation was known to be violent, making use of armed escorts, armoured cars, and heavy weapons. It produced cocaine in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, before shipping it through an elaborate logistics system to Europe and the United States. Luiz Carlos da Rocha is also accused of being one of the main providers of cocaine to criminal organisations within Brazil, in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

In total, police estimate his empire produced some five tonnes of cocaine each month. Operation Spectrum - the name given to the sting - also seized some $10m (£7.6m) worth of criminal assets, including farms, other real estate, luxury vehicles and aircraft. Officers believe Rocha's wealth is closer to $100m, and say they will seek to seize the rest of his assets in the second phase of the operation.

Brazil arrests notorious drug kingpin Luiz Carlos da Rocha - BBC News

 

[FA_Q2]

Brazil nabs drug kingpin Luiz Carlos 'White Head' da Rocha...

Brazil arrests notorious drug kingpin Luiz Carlos da Rocha
Sat, 01 Jul 2017: The alleged cocaine maker had evaded police for 30 years with plastic surgery and fake names.

Brazilian police have captured a notorious drug kingpin who used plastic surgery to evade capture for almost 30 years. Luiz Carlos da Rocha - nicknamed "White Head" - is believed to be the leader of a massive cocaine empire in South America. Federal police said sentences handed down to Rocha amount to more than 50 years of prison time. Police said he was "a criminal who lived discreetly and in the shadows".

Luiz Carlos da Rocha was living under a fake name after cosmetic surgery, police said​

The drug kingpin had been living under the assumed name Vitor Luiz de Moraes. Agents compared old known photos of Rocha to the images of the new suspect, "and concluded that Luiz Carlos da Rocha and Vitor Luiz are the same person". Brazilian police said his organisation was known to be violent, making use of armed escorts, armoured cars, and heavy weapons. It produced cocaine in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, before shipping it through an elaborate logistics system to Europe and the United States. Luiz Carlos da Rocha is also accused of being one of the main providers of cocaine to criminal organisations within Brazil, in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

In total, police estimate his empire produced some five tonnes of cocaine each month. Operation Spectrum - the name given to the sting - also seized some $10m (£7.6m) worth of criminal assets, including farms, other real estate, luxury vehicles and aircraft. Officers believe Rocha's wealth is closer to $100m, and say they will seek to seize the rest of his assets in the second phase of the operation.

Brazil arrests notorious drug kingpin Luiz Carlos da Rocha - BBC News

And 10 more will take his place.

As long as the demand exists, the drug supply will continue to meet it.

 

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Sale of Drugs fuels terrorism...

Drug trafficking main source of income for terrorists in Pakistan
Thursday 20th July, 2017: The international community has long regarded Pakistan as a transit point for narcotics trafficking, and this was confirmed on July 13, when the nation's Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) announced the seizure of 365 kilograms of drugs worth 430 million Pakistani rupees in international market.

Addressing the media after the seizure, the ANF said the drugs were seized during 12 counter-narcotics operations conducted across the country. News of this huge drug haul has once again confirmed that they are being sold illegally and the revenue acquired from it is used to finance terror activities emanating from its soil. Various reports have suggested that Pakistan's drug syndicate runs a parallel economy in connivance with select elements of the political and military establishments, and the July 13 seizure is being touted as just being the tip of the lethal drugs iceberg whose tentacles are spreading across international markets. In February, the ANF seized narcotics weighing 19.6 tonnes and valued at 34 billion Pakistani rupees. Then, 20 counter-narcotics operations were initiated.

A March 2017 confidential report compiled by the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU), an intelligence service department, active within the Ministry of Finance, said that "Main sources of income of terrorists in Pakistan include foreign funding, drug trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, extortion from business, etcetera." Pakistan is geographically vulnerable to drug trafficking, sharing a 2,430-km-long porous border with Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of illicit opium. Cannabis is also produced in large quantities in the sub-region, most of the cannabis trafficked in the region also originates from Afghanistan, and is processed in the inaccessible areas of Pakistan's FATA region. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates, approximately 43 per cent of the Afghan opiates are trafficked through Pakistan.

The UNODC estimates that Pakistan is now the destination and transit country for approximately 40 percent of the opiates produced in Afghanistan. Most processing takes place in small, mobile laboratories in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas. The sub region itself has become a major consumer market for opiates. Opiate processing on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border have created a trafficking and, importantly in the case of Pakistan, a drug abuse problem since the early 1980s. The Khunjerab Pass in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region overlooks Pakistan, but the border inspection station here, according to the state mouth piece Global Times, suspiciously sees every traveler coming through as a criminal trying to smuggle drugs or guns into the country. Besides Pakistan, the Khunjerab Pass is also near Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

So concerned are the authorities here about the potential spread of narco-terrorism, that the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of Kashgar recently recruited 3,000 more policemen aged between 18 and 35 as a counter-measure. Ever since the Khunjerab Pass crossing opened in 1982, drug dealers have been trying to flood the Chinese market with their lucrative products. Usually, according to the Global Times, the drugs are grown and manufactured in Afghanistan and are then transported to northern Pakistan, where the bulk product is packaged into smaller bags before being smuggled into China. Over the years, inspectors have seen countless concealment methods. Some put the drugs into condoms and hide the packages inside their body, some dissolve narcotics into cola, while others put them into handicrafts, cosmetic packages and other everyday goods. People who take the drugs along each step of the chain do not know much about the other links.

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