Narkotika - Drugs
Drugs trade 'rampant in borderless EU states'
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels
Electronic
Telegraph Saturday 22 April 2000
The abolition of internal border controls in the European Union has opened the way for drug-trafficking on a huge scale and fostered the "criminalisation" of politics in Europe, it is claimed.
The Geopolitical Observatory for Drugs, based in Paris, says in its annual report for 1999 that drug smuggling was on the rise worldwide, but that the EU's "Schengen area has become the most important drug market on the planet".
It said the EU's anti-drug policies were "wishful thinking" and that drug gangs had gained a foothold in the political parties, police forces and courts of several EU countries.
The report said Spain was "an aircraft carrier for drugs", serving as the EU's principal port of entry for narcotics from all over the world. It was now the main centre for money laundering by the Colombian cocaine cartels, which operate in close partnership with the crime syndicates of the western region of Galicia.
Smugglers had penetrated "the heart of the judicial apparatus" and enjoyed a network of political protection in Galicia. Elements within both of Spain's major political parties had succumbed to the temptation of illicit funds, but the worst offenders were within the Partido Popular of the Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, said the report.
But Manuel Fraga, head of Galicia's regional government, said: "It is totally false that money from drug-trafficking has been funding Galicia's political system."
Italy is accused of masking its central role in international drug smuggling by creating the impression abroad that the activities are confined to Mafia groups in the South. In fact, Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, is entrenched as a major force in the north of the country, the report claims.
Milan had become Italy's Mafia and money-laundering capital, at the centre of a "spider's web of criminality" across the North involving Cosa Nostra, La Camorra (the Neapolitan Mafia), la Sacra Corona Unita, (from Puglia), and the ultra-secret but powerful 'Ndrangheta (from Calabria), in various forms of "joint ventures" with the Albanian and Kosovar crime industry.
Britain is scarcely mentioned in the report, except for the production of synthetic drugs by British dealers. Jersey is singled out for tolerating money-laundering by the cartels.
Britain has an opt-out from the Schengen agreement and has so far retained control of its own frontiers.
