For the first time, three European Union cooperation programmes have joined forces to establish synergies and common objectives in investigations against drug trafficking. EL PAcCTO, COPOLAD III and EUROFRONT organised the seminar “Drug trafficking areas and the urgency of coordinating investigations in the penitentiary and border areas” in Asunción, Paraguay in June. As a result of the meeting, the participating experts are defining a series of operational recommendations to increase the efficiency of investigations.
Cecilia Pérez, Minister Security Advisor to the Presidency of the Republic of Paraguay, expressed the urgent need to cooperate to prevent crimes against the population, condemning the recent murder of Paraguayan lawyer and prosecutor Marcelo Pecci: “We must all unite together so that a murder of a person as brave as Marcelo Pecci, so committed to Paraguay, to Latin America and to the world, never happens again. It is crucial that we work in international coordination to counteract the globalisation of organised crime.
More efficient investigations against drug trafficking
The experts in penitentiary intelligence, border and migration management and the prosecutors of the network of anti-drug prosecutors of Ibero-America (RFAI) established a series of operational recommendations on international cooperation and inter-institutional coordination.
The recommendations include adapting the legal framework to the fight against transnational organised crime, criminalising and prosecuting some offences that allow drug traffickers to continue committing crimes from prison, integrating penitentiary intelligence into centralised regional intelligence systems and identifying critical borders where joint investigation teams can be activated.
“As for the future development of our actions,” concluded Eufemia Esposito, Senior Police State Officer of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, “I believe it is extremely important to focus efforts on some key concepts such as effective multilateralism and an inter-agency approach to security issues. He also recalled the need to adapt to the new context. “We are no longer dealing with ordinary crime, there has been a qualitative leap, a dramatic acceleration also caused by the pandemic. Crime is taking full advantage of all the tools of cybernetics and technology”.
The technical-operational seminar was attended by 61 people, including magistrates, border police managers, representatives of migration and penitentiary systems from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, France, Italy, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico and Uruguay. The objective was to share the challenges faced by the three participating cooperation programmes: EUROFRONT, which seeks to improve security and development in Latin America through the integrated management of its borders; EL PAcCTO, which focuses on the fight against organised crime, and COPOLAD III, which promotes regional anti-drug policies.