ANOTHER WAR ON DRUGS VICTORY

Inside Colombia's FOUR BILLION DOLLAR jungle cocaine labs where country's largest guerrilla group produced and ship tons of cocaine to El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel

 

By Adry Torres

 

Daily Mail

February 2, 2021

 

The Colombian military seized two clandestine laboratories where the country's largest guerrilla group generated up to $4 billion in cocaine a year that was then delivered to Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán's old cartel in Mexico.

Video released by the South American nation's attorney general's office shows the moment soldiers descended from a helicopter and raided one of the two compounds that had been set up by the National Liberation Army in a forest located in the Pacific department of Nariño on Saturday.

Security forces were aided by agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and were able to confiscate 2,800 kilos worth at least $95 million.

 

Colombian troops test the purity of some of the cocaine seized

 

At least 600 kilos of cocaine paste were also seized from the laboratories, which contained six shops, along with precursor chemicals which included acetone, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and caustic soda.  

Colombia's Attorney General's Office estimated that the two laboratories produced at least three to four tons of cocaine a month or 87,000 kilos.

Investigators learned that the cocaine shipments were loaded into speedboats that departed from the Pacific shoreline of Cumbitara, a town near the border with Ecuador.

The cocaine was delivered to several countries in Central America, and from there they were transferred to drug traffickers associated with the Sinaloa Cartel.  

The Colombian government said in October 2020 that four mayor Mexican criminal organizations - Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Los Zetas and the Beltrán-Leyva Organization - are responsible for the majority of the cocaine that is exported from the Andean nation. 

'Mexicans are in charge of buying, trafficking and selling in the United States,' said Rafael Guarín, the presidential adviser for national security, according to Business Insider MX.

'Mexico sends emissaries that verify the quality and leave through Venezuela or northern Ecuador to reach the United States.'

Data collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime shows that in 2019, Colombia had 154,000 hectares of coca leaf with the potential capacity to produce 1,137 tons, or 1 million kilos of cocaine.