The Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas are expanding their operations and gaining territory in Asia and Africa, Their goal is to control shipping ports in Asia and Africa which will allow them to create new drug routes into Europe. Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel actually share drug routes that originate in Colombia and end at ports located in West Africa. Both groups also traffic cocaine shipments that depart from Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina which are also delivered to Africa.
| Ndrangheta Italy |
Once the Mexican Cartels have smuggled the narcotics – cocaine, marijuana, heroin and synthetic drugs – into West Africa, they transport them, often in vehicles or light aircraft to Europe.
Latin American DTOs are using two basic methods to transport drugs to Africa and Europe.
| Los Rastrojos |
Sea
DTOs hide drugs in large ships that travel from Latin America to Africa and Europe. Drug traffickers set up fake export operations and hide their drugs in the cargo of the ghost export businesses, submarines, fishing boats and private yachts. On arrival, operatives often use smaller “fast boats” to transport the drugs to land;
| The FARC |
Air
DTOs hire drug mules to hide drugs in their luggage on commercial flights, clothes & inside their bodies.
Once the drugs have reached West Africa, drug traffickers often load the drugs into land vehicles, such as SUVs, and transport them to their distribution points in Europe. Security forces in Latin America and the United States have succeeded in recent years in slowing the amount of drugs smuggled north to the U.S. and Mexico by DTOs. This success has made the Atlantic drug routes to Africa and Europe more important to narco-traffickers.
| The FARC |
The war on drugs and the closing of border crossings by authorities in countries where cocaine is directly introduced have forced the Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel to look for new routes to satisfy demand in the European drug market, which means ports in Western Africa. Sixteen African countries comprise the main points of entry for Latin American drug traffickers, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo and Sierra Leone.
Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel often collaborate with other Latin American DTOs. For example, the Sinaloa Cartel has created alliances with Colombian cartels and with Oliver Solarte and the Cifuentes Brothers (FARC financiers). The FARC is responsible for many of the drugs that are transported to West Africa and then to Europe.
The FARC is the biggest cocaine smuggler in the world, in Colombia, more than half of the drugs produced and exported to other countries carry the FARC brand. Other Colombian organised crime groups – the Popular Revolutionary Anti-Subversive Army of Colombia (ERPAC),
| Los Urabeños |
| Los Zetas |
Both Los Zetas & the Sinaloa cartel has partnerships with criminal organisations in several European countries, including Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The above mentioned alliances allow Mexican cartels to transport an estimated 47% of Colombian cocaine shipments directly into Europe via West Africa.
| Sinaloa cartel |
The European Union has proven attractive due to the economics of price elasticity and their distance from the supply source. Drugs are a lucrative product because addicts are highly “elastic” when it comes to high prices. The farther a kilo of cocaine travels from Colombia, the more profit it produces for the merchant. Prices from Colombia to Texas, for example, could jump from some $5,000 a kilo to $16,000 a kilo; to Paris, $25,000 a kilo, and further abroad to Australia could be as high as $250,000 a kilo. Economics demand that distance from the supply source in the Andean mountains results in a higher price at the local level.
The nature of cocaine as a product adds a significant amount of risk during transport, and the price of this risk is then passed along to the final consumer. For example, a route from Colombia to France increases the price for a pure kilo of cocaine significantly. There is a risk to move the cocaine out of Colombia and into Central America, likely Honduras, where it is stored until the DTOs are ready to move it to Mexico. Once the cocaine enters Mexico, it takes another jump in value due to the “market pressures” of government and rival action. The kilo then makes a significant jump in price when it moves from Mexico into the European Union through West Africa, or perhaps Spain, and finally again when the sales price is placed in euros, not dollars. In some cases, the exchange rate increases the value; in others, such as in Australia, the street price of a kilo of pure cocaine is so high that exchange rates have little impact on the business decision to transport cocaine across the Pacific.
| Norte del Valle |
As an entry point to the European Union, West Africa remains a key strategic goal for all DTOs, where recent reports suggest that Mexican criminal organisations. continue to expand—although with little to no violence compared to other routes. In Guinea-Bissau, the Sinaloa Federation and multiple Latin DTOs can work directly with the military in that country. The business model that the Sinaloa cartel most often employs, however, is one where they partner with local criminal groups and empowers them. They rarely use force to push them out of the way. Due to this model, the Mexican media has begun to refer to the Sinaloa Federation as a “narco-holding,” or a holding company for several smaller subsidiaries located worldwide.
Los Zetas has also formed strategic partnerships with organised crime groups in Central America and the Caribbean. The cartel also has established an alliance with Ndrangheta, a Mafia organisation based in Italy. This alliance is beneficial for both criminal groups. Los Zetas transports the drugs to and within Europe while Ndrangheta guarantees secure distribution points. From Italy, the Ndrangheta is responsible for distributing cocaine in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, Belgium, Spain, Bulgaria, and Albania. In 2011, Italian police arrested 45 individuals linked to Los Zetas. In addition to drug trafficking, Los Zetas are involved in human trafficking between Europe and Mexico.
