CORRUPTION-PERU: Drug Trafficking Digs In Its Heels

By Ángel Páez Reprint | | Print |

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Dec 9 2005 (IPS) - Seventeen months after the U.S. government added Peruvian airline executive Fernando Zevallos to its list of international drug trafficking bosses, the Peruvian judicial system plucked up the courage to order his arrest and take a closer look at this illegal trade.

Seventeen months after the U.S. government included Peruvian airline businessman Fernando Zevallos on its list of international drug trafficking bosses, the Peruvian judicial system plucked up the courage to order his arrest and has begun to take a closer look at the social influence wielded by this illegal trade.

In contrast with the slowness of Peru’s courts, drug trafficking is progressing by leaps and bounds: the area under coca leaf cultivation reached 40,000 hectares, which translates into the potential production of 100 tons of cocaine, worth 150 million dollars (1,500 dollars per kilo) in Peru and 2.5 billion dollars (25,000 dollars per kilo) in the United States, according to estimates by the anti-drug police.

Zevallos, who was arrested on Nov. 19, is not the only case. The U.S. ambassador in Lima, James Curtis Struble, protested because Peru’s Supreme Court of Justice rejected an extradition request from the U.S. against Jorge “Polaco” Chávez, a notorious drug trafficker with connections to Zevallos.

“Polaco”, who was seized by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents with a shipment of cocaine in Opa Locka, Florida, admitted before a judge in that southern U.S. state that he and Zevallos were partners and plea-bargained to testify in return for freedom on parole, after which he escaped to Lima.

Zevallos stands accused of founding the AeroContinente airline with drug money. Jorge López Paredes, head of the “Los Norteños” drug gang which has close links with the Mexican cartels, testified in court that he had personally given Zevallos one million “narcodollars” to set up the company.

But the airline, which had offices in Miami, Florida and Panama, ceased operating in June 2004, after the White House threatened to bring charges against anyone who helped Zevallos continue his commercial activities.

Legislators from several Peruvian political parties, including the governing party Perú Posible, interceded on Zevallos’s behalf when he waged a virtual war on the Chilean authorities, who expelled his company from Chile because of its ties to drug trafficking.

Ever since the collapse of the Alberto Fujimori regime in November 2000, anti-corruption prosecutors and judges in Peru have been investigating the crimes of his government, with mixed success. They have also launched probes into a number of scandals involving the current administration of Alejandro Toledo, who came to power on an anti-corruption platform.

But they have failed to show the same determination to fight the growing influence of the drug trade.

Fujimori, who governed autocratically from 1990 to 2000, is in prison in Chile awaiting extradition for a large number of crimes. His closest associate at that time, former security chief Vladimiro Montesinos, is in detention and on trial in Peru.

The non governmental organisation Justicia Viva, a group of jurists pushing for reforms of the justice system, concluded in a study that priority has been given to “redressing the wrongs of the past, at the expense of neglecting the need to prevent the commission of further crimes.” The NGO warns: “There is no continuity that could guarantee an adequate fight against corruption in the future.”

Heavy demand from Mexican drug traffickers has fuelled cocaine production in Peru. Sources at the National Anti-Drug Directorate (Dirección Nacional Antidrogas) told IPS that 11.3 tons of cocaine were seized between January and November 2005, “an all-time record, which demonstrates that there is a boom in drug trafficking.”

Now that Zevallos has been captured, the authorities have begun to focus on the effects of the drug trade: money from the sale of cocaine has contaminated politicians, the business community, the military, journalists and some institutions and industries.

In Peru, four elections are to be held in 2006: presidential, legislative, regional and municipal. Analysts fear that drug smugglers will take advantage of the elections to launder money by financing electoral campaigns, or promoting candidates of their choice.

Although under Peruvian law, the origin of funds used for electoral purposes must be declared, institutions such as the National Electoral Board and the National Electoral Office are in no position to monitor each and every candidate. A total of 4,000 candidates are expected to stand for the parliamentary elections alone.

“We really don’t know if the institutions are going to work properly, although they have the authority to do so,” Jorge Valladares, general coordinator of Transparencia, a local NGO, told IPS.

“It depends not only on the institutions, but also on the parties and the candidates. They have an obligation to submit reports on their election campaign expenses, and only then can we corroborate the information,” he said.

Valladares recognised that drug smuggling, especially in the areas where coca leaf is grown and cocaine is produced, could filter dirty money into the campaigns. “It’s a latent risk and we can’t just sit back and wait without taking action,” he said.

The risk is rising because cocaine production in Peru has taken on a magnitude that has never been seen before.

“In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, Peruvian drug traffickers sold basic cocaine paste to the Colombians and were forbidden to produce cocaine. But in the second half of the 1990s, the Peruvians started to supply cocaine itself directly to the Mexican cartels,” an official from the Interior Ministry’s intelligence office told IPS.

They “have taken a big step up the international drug trafficking ladder, which means that much more dirty money is being handled, and there is more corruption. The Gulf of Mexico cartels in Tijuana and Juárez, which are the main buyers of Peruvian cocaine, are reacting against the prospect of losing their principal drug supplier,” he stated.

On Monday five police officers were murdered in the town of Palmapampa. Authorities believe that a group of the disbanded Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) guerrillas, of whom some active cells still remain, were responsible. The Maoist Shining Path is allied with drug smugglers in the coca leaf producing zone in the Ene and Apurimac river valleys.

Only a month ago, the government set up an anti-drug operations base at Palmapampa with support from the United States.

The attack was a warning to the security forces which have begun a campaign to eradicate coca leaf plantations, the main livelihood of some 25,000 peasant farmers in the area.

According to the corruption perceptions index produced by the global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International – represented in Peru by an organisation known as ProÉtica – the Toledo administration is perceived as even more corrupt than the Fujimori regime.

Laura Puertas, the executive secretary of ProÉtica, told IPS that “under Fujimori the press was bought off, and corruption cases did not come to light. Under Toledo there is a free press, and each new case becomes a scandal.”

However, “The truth is that Toledo’s government has not shown a determination to fight corruption with firmness and conviction,” she added.

According to Inés Arias Navarro, the coordinator of Forum Solidaridad Peru (Peru Solidarity Forum), the consequences of neglecting the fight against crime of all kinds will soon become apparent.

“Corruption generated by drug trafficking not only contaminates government circles, but the private sphere as well,” she told IPS. “As we watch the megatrials of those responsible for crimes during the government of Fujimori on television, the most serious form of corruption, drug trafficking, is being ignored. We must not forget that the traffickers must have a very close relationship with politicians in order to keep doing business without hindrance.”

“That’s why it’s essential that politicians account for their campaign financing,” she emphasised.

Now a desperate Zevallos may spill the beans and begin to implicate the politicians who once shielded and defended him.