Hugo Chavez’s Narcotics Connection By Jim Kouri
The Bear on Jul 20 2008 at 8:22 am | Filed under: Need to Know
Recently, Mexican military officials claimed they seized five-and-a-half tons of powdered cocaine from a commercial aircraft that landed in Mexico following a trip from Venezuela. The street value of the drugs was estimated to be upwards of $100 million.
Mexican cops reported that the cocaine was discovered inside over a hundred suitcases marked “private.” The military officers announced that they made three arrests as a result of the cocaine seizure.
Mexican officials claim that cocaine is increasingly being imported from Venezuela, with the US or Europe being the drugs’ final destination.
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Meanwhile, at least one metric ton of cocaine per month, and smaller quantities of heroin, are exported to consumers through the country’s principal airport, several foreign counter-drug officials who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of their investigations told The Miami Herald.
One of the officials also estimated that as much as $2 million is paid out monthly in bribes to airport officials, policemen and National Guard personnel who collaborate with the drug runners.
One informant told another investigator that airport jobs go to those willing to participate in the scheme.Counter-drug officials also say private airplanes that traffic drugs from Colombia to such nearby destinations as the Caribbean islands regularly pass through Maiquetia, landing there to get a change in identification numbers and perhaps a new paint job.
”The airport has been a problem, is a problem and will be a problem,” one of the officials told The Miami Herald.Venezuela has clearly become a major transshipment point for illegal drugs leaving Colombia.
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There are some who believe that the corruption goes directly into the office of President Hugo Chavez.
It is significant that the drugs came via Venezuela, because the Colombian army has long alleged that Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez, is sympathetic to the Marxist rebels, according to Venzuelan political analyst Aleksander Boyd.
Boyd says, “Evidence, as is often the case with his ‘revolution,’ indicates that since Chavez’s arrival in power, Venezuela has become the favourite launching pad for Colombia’s drug traffickers. It is argued that 80% of the cocaine produced in neighbouring Colombia and the region enters the international markets via Venezuela, as heretofore unseen quantities have been seized in various countries.
“On the other hand Chavez’s cozy relationship with the FARC is no secret. So much so that the deranged president disrupted ties with Colombia, Venezuela’s second largest commercial partner, over the capture in Caracas of FARC’s leader Rodrigo Granda, who had Venezuelan citizenship, whose wife and step-daughter were welcomed by close associates of Chavez … Rodriguez Chacin, and who was a guest of honor in one of his Bolivarian get-togethers.”
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