London—MI6 anti-drug specialists are spearheading a deadly new war in the jungles of Venezuela where President Hugo Chavez’ revolutionary regime has become the key trafficking route for 90 percent of the cocaine sold on Britain’s streets.
Only one other nation has such an export figure. Afghanistan, as confirmed Britain’s Ministry of Defence, provides 85 percent of the heroin sold in the United Kingdom.
The Secret Intelligence Service has discovered in the past three months that there has been a dramatic development in the global pattern of narcotics smuggling out of Venezuela. It is now the key staging post in the export of cocaine into Britain.
“We estimate that over 250 tons of cocaine has passed through Venezuela in the past six months. This is five times more than in the past two years”, states an MI6 report to Britain’s Home Office.
MI6 officers operating in the high-danger steamy jungles of Venezuela have established that senior commanders in the country’s security forces are “profiting from the smuggling by actively helping smugglers by allowing them to use military airfields”.
“The air links enable the Colombia drug cartels to remain the world’s largest producer of raw coca to be refined into cocaine and airlifted out of Colombia into Venezuela. The flights take off in Colombia and land in jungle strips inside Venezuela”, said an intelligence officer.
From there the cocaine is driven by road to other military controlled airports inside Venezuela and loaded on long-range aircraft to be flown across the Atlantic to West Africa.
“These are small countries with little ability to police their air space or coastline, notably Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone, which are the key transit points from where the drugs are then trafficked into Europe”, confirmed a senior British intelligence officer based in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
From West Africa the drugs are shipped by road convoys to the North African coast. From there, high-speed launches convey the drugs into Spain–and on into the rest of Europe.
Since Hugo Chavez came to power, the number of arrests of drug runners in Venezuela has dramatically fallen. In 1998–the year before he came to office–Venezuela’s security forces had made 11,581 drug-related arrests. Three years later the figure had fallen to just 1,082. Today it is even lower.
Part of the problem is that President Chavez, who calls President George W Bush “the devil”, has officially terminated all cooperation with America’s anti-narcotics campaign.
He has also stopped cooperating with Colombia over that government’s fight against its drug barons. Chavez regards Colombia’s right-wing regime as a US puppet.
“The outcome of all this is massive corruption on a new scale where the drug barons, the Venezuelan army, police and national guard who actively control the border, help the traffickers in return for substantial backhanders,” said an MI6 report to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
Some Venezuelan army officers have become millionaires with tax-free bank accounts in European banks.
An MI6 report reveals how five smugglers loaded 2.2 tons of cocaine on board an aircraft bound for Sierra Leone. They had been escorted on to the tarmac by four members of Venezuela’s elite police force, CICIP.
America’s latest Narcotics Control Strategy Report, which supports the claims made by MI6, says Tobago and Trinidad have become active staging posts in the smuggling of drugs into Europe. Gulfstreams, Boeing 727s and DC-9s are often used to fly them on into West Africa.
While there is no evidence to support suspicions that President Chavez–who has denounced it as “an evil trade”–has personally profited from drug smuggling, there is little evidence, say MI6, that he tries to stop it.
Gordon Thomas is the author of a new edition of Gideon’s Spies: The Inside Story of Israel’s Legendary Secret Service, The Mossad, by JR Books of London and available on Amazon Books.
(C) G-2 Bulletin, Washington D.C., USA, and Gordon Thomas.
