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Editors --- "Reflections on the AFP presence in Latin America" [1998] AUFPPlatypus 26; (1998) 60 Platypus: Journal of the Australian Federal Police, Article 5


Reflections on the AFP presence in Latin America

The AFP has liaison officers around the world who, along with Interpol, provide a comprehensive international resource in fighting crime.

Liaison officers maintain a high profile within the international law enforcement community through their attendance at conferences and seminars and by facilitating the exchange of criminal intelligence on matters such as organised crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, child exploitation, fraud and homicide.

The liaison officer network is directed and supported from the AFP's Head Office by International which, in turn, ensures the provision of timely advice to Australian law enforcement agencies on international criminal activity which may have an adverse impact on the quality of life of Australians.

After four years as the AFP's Senior Police Liaison Officer in Latin America where the illicit drug trade, particularly in cocaine, continues to thrive despite the efforts of local authorities to combat it, returned to Australia recently. Now a Project Manager under the National Illicit Drug Strategy to increase international law enforcement cooperation on narcotic matters, Federal Agent Hicks provided the following insight into his previous role.

The AFP has maintained a Latin America liaison post in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, since 1989. Originally located in the downtown area, the post is now at the Australian Embassy in the suburb of Belgrano, about five kilometres from the centre of the Capital Federal.

For most Australians arriving in Buenos Aires, the biggest cultural shock is the geographical size of the city and the commensurate hustle and bustle of city life, including the huge volume of vehicular traffic — with a directional flow converse to that in Australia — by Argentines with seemingly complete indifference to rules, laws and other drivers!

For some of those new arrivals all this, together with a completely different culture and language, serves to make the initial impact of culture shock somewhat difficult to handle.

The ‘Capital Federal' (Buenos Aires), covers a geographical area of 200km and the surrounding Greater Buenos Aires area (Province of Buenos Aires) covers a further 4326km. An appropriate analogy of the geographical relationship between the Capital Federal and the Province of Buenos Aires would be that of Canberra to the state of NSW.

Metropolitan Buenos Aires is the largest and most densely populated area of Argentina with more than 12 million inhabitants — almost 30 per cent of the total population of the country.

Buenos Aires, originally founded by Juan de Garay in 1580, is by no means the oldest city in Argentina. It was preceded by the provincial cities of Santiago de Estero, Mendoza, San Miguel de Tucuman, Santa Fe and Cordoba, all originally founded by the Spanish. It was not until the beginning of the 19th Century that Buenos Aires ‘la Reina del Plata' (The Queen of the River Plate) began to develop into the present modern city.

The AFP presence in Argentina was represented initially by then Detective Superintendent David Schramm, followed by Detective Superintendent Bob Sheppard who was tragically killed in an aviation accident in Colombia in early 1993, before I took up the post in 1993. During my time as the senior liaison officer the post was supported by Tom O'Brien, Ron Thorn and the current AFP representative John Beveridge.

The location of the AFP post in Buenos Aires resulted from the consideration of various factors, including that Australia maintains an embassy there, and more importantly from a law enforcement viewpoint, Argentina is still the only country in Latin America that has regular, twice-weekly direct flights to Australia. Popularly known as the ‘trans-polar' route, it extends from Buenos Aires south to Rio Gallegos in the Patagonia region, then to Auckland, NZ, continuing directly into Sydney.

This route is favoured by narcotics couriers who are often intercepted by Australian and Argentine authorities attempting to smuggle cocaine into Australia. The Argentine Policia Aeronautica (Airport Police), Policia Federal and the Aduana (Customs) search passengers and baggage in both Buenos Aires, and again in Rio Gallegos during a two-hour stopover to refuel.

Argentina is the only country in Latin America which has regular direct flights to Australia. Popularly known as the 'trans-polar' route, it extends from Buenos Aires south to Rio Gallegos in the Patagonia region, then to Auckland NZ, continuing directly into Sydney.

This route is favoured by narcotics couriers who are often intercepted by Australian and Argentine authorities attempting to smuggle cocaine into Australia.

In one such case an Australian woman was arrested in 1997 in possession of 7.2kg of cocaine when she tried to board the trans-polar flight in Buenos Aires to travel to Sydney. The AFP office assisted the Argentine authorities and the investigating judge in gathering further evidentiary material for the prosecution case.

The offender cooperated with both the AFP and Argentine authorities in the matter and received some clemency. She is now serving a custodial sentence in Argentina and her co-offenders are being sought for extradition to that country.

It is an accepted and legal practice in Argentina for the investigating judge to openly offer an inducement to a suspect to cooperate with authorities in helping to identify and apprehend other offenders or enable the seizure of narcotics and property. The degree of cooperation is assessed at the time of sentence and the term of imprisonment discounted as seen appropriate.

Australian law enforcement representatives in Argentina have little difficulty in gaining an understanding of the ‘Systema Policial' (Police System), as in many ways it is similar to that in Australia. The Capital Federal is policed by the Policia Federal de Argentina (Federal Police) and each of the provinces maintains its own autonomous police force. The Federal Police also maintains ‘delgaciones' (police offices) in each of the provinces who are responsible for the enforcement of federal laws in much the same way that the AFP maintains a presence in each of the Australian states.

However, once you step outside of this structure there are other law enforcement organisations responsible for a broad range of law enforcement aspects. They are the Aduana (Customs), Policia Aeronautica (Airport Police originally composed of Argentine Air Force personnel), Prefectura Naval (similar to the US Coast Guard which also has a law-enforcement role particularly regarding narcotic trafficking involving vessels), and the Gendarmeria (a quasi-military organisation with the responsibility for policing and controlling Argentina's national frontiers and the national highway system).

This proliferation of law-enforcement organisations outside of the principal police agencies often causes friction in the demarcation of law enforcement responsibilities. From the liaison officer viewpoint it is often a case of ‘walking a fine line' and exercising considerable judgement and tact when trying to decide who to approach with a particular problem or request.

The situation is exacerbated to some degree by the Argentine Judicial System — based on the Napoleonic system — which among many other procedures appoints an investigating judge to control police investigations. This often leads to resentment from the police who regard themselves, not the judges, as the expert professional investigators and this system is not unique to Argentina as the same judicial system exists throughout Latin America. Along with the corresponding bureaucratic system, it can be the cause of much frustration to foreign liaison officers. As an example, the system for recording and maintaining records is steeped in antiquity and even obtaining simple data such as births and deaths records and criminal histories can be a slow and painstaking exercise and has to be taken into consideration by officers in Australia requesting such records from Latin America.

Unfortunately, corruption is endemic throughout Latin America and various law enforcement agencies are not exempt from this influence. From a liaison officer's viewpoint, the influence and presence of corrupt elements is always a major factor to be considered when requesting information or assistance in operational matters. My firm advice to AFP members and other Australian law enforcement agencies seeking assistance is in the first instance to seek the advice of the liaison officer who, through established and trustworthy contacts, will be best placed to assess the potential for damage to operational integrity. Having said this, be assured that in Latin America there are also many honest and trustworthy police and law enforcement officers with whom the AFP liaison officer maintains close liaison in order to seek assistance when required.

The role and responsibility of AFP liaison officers in this part of the world is not limited to Argentina. The geographical area of responsibility of the LO extends to the entire continent of South America, and on occasions to Central America and the Caribbean. On the South American continent this encompasses 13 individual countries, including Brazil which alone is bigger in land mass than the Australian continent.

These large geographical distances are among the considerations weighed by liaison officers when receiving requests for inquiries to be followed up in various countries as the travel involved is expensive and time consuming. Whenever possible, inquiries are conducted by telephone and facsimile with our liaison contacts throughout the continent, although this can have limitations as well because of poor telecommunications infrastructure.

The AFP must also compete also with requests for information from other foreign law-enforcement officers to Latin American police organisations which often causes unavoidable delays. A typical example of this situation occurred in 1997 when the Colombian Departmento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), which among many other functions operates the Interpol Office in Colombia, had a 100 per cent increase in requests for information from foreign liaison officers with no corresponding increase in DAS staff or resources.

Throughout Latin America numerous other countries have law enforcement representatives and include those from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, US Customs, the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the British Customs Drugs Investigation Service, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Many of these representatives are located in a concentrated area in the northern part of the continent in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, which remain the main producers and refiners of cocaine. Despite intensive law enforcement efforts and UN-sponsored programs to eradicate the coca leaf crops, the cocaine industry continues to flourish.

Colombia has been described in the past as a ‘narco-democracy' and it is alleged that there is no level of Colombian society that has not been tainted by the national and international activity in the cocaine industry.

The Colombian National Police under General Serrano, supported by the USA and some members of the Colombian judiciary and government, have been successful in dismantling the principal ‘narcotic cartels' in both Medellin and Cali. However, there have been no significant signs of the international trade in cocaine abating.

It has been argued, with some validity I suggest, that while the principal ‘narco-trafficantes' have been removed from the immediate scene and incarcerated, they still exercise considerable influence within the cocaine industry. For example, the principals of the Cali cartel, the Rodriguez-Orejuelas brothers, continue to maintain their status as major international cocaine traffickers by controlling their business from their prison cells. However, their imprisonment has imposed limitations on their ability to exert their former influence to its fullest extent and law enforcement officials have, in recent times, seen the emergence of a younger group of ‘narco-trafficantes' who aspire to control the industry. This has led to a fragmentation and proliferation of smaller groups within the industry which has served to make the task of the anti-narcotics police even more difficult.

Colombian Police activity in the fight against the trafficking of cocaine is as far removed from our normal concept of police action as it possibly could be. In Colombia it is literally a ‘guerra' (war) against narco-traffickers, many of whom have entered into an unholy alliance with the various anti-government terrorist groups which exist in Colombia.

It is a war which the Colombian Police cannot afford to lose. An indication of the deadly seriousness of the situation and the single-minded dedication of the Colombian Police and anti-narcotics officers in their efforts to eradicate the cocaine industry is the police mortality rate. In the past 10 years the Colombian Police have lost more than 3000 members who have been killed while performing their duties.

The fluid situation of the cocaine industry in Colombia has seen a partial shift recently in the power bases of the controlling groups away from Colombia to the Mexican cartels. These emergent organisations are rapidly becoming the major threat facing law enforcement officials combating the flow of cocaine out of Latin America. Law enforcement officers say there has been a significant increase in the quantity of cocaine being routed through the Caribbean.

Another aspect of narcotics production in Latin America which has emerged recently is the cultivation and refining of ‘amapola' (the opium poppy) in Columbia. The Argentine Federal Police seized a 10kg shipment of high quality Colombian heroin destined for Europe in November 1997. This was the first such seizure in Argentina and has become a matter of major concern for both Latin American and foreign law enforcement officers who are now faced with a source of heroin not previously produced in South America.

The distribution and control of heroin originating in Latin America is currently dominated by the Colombians. In 1995, it was estimated that 62 per cent of the heroin in the US came from Latin America. Currently, the estimation is in the vicinity of 52 per cent. While at the present time in Australia there have been no confirmed seizures of Latin American heroin, I suggest that it is inevitable that such seizures will occur and the current US experience should be regarded as a warning to Australian law enforcement agencies.

The illicit drug trade in the northern zone of South America and in Mexico continues to grow while the impact of its expansion is reflected in a pattern of increased cocaine importation in Australia and throughout the world. This situation has prompted other foreign law enforcement agencies to increase the presence of their international liaison officers in South America.

The responsibilities of AFP officers in the area are varied and interesting. Apart from the routine operational and intelligence oriented activities, liaison officers are required to represent the Commissioner and the AFP in various capacities.

These range from providing professional advice to other law enforcement agencies, to making formal submissions and presentations on behalf of the AFP and other Australian law enforcement organisations at international conferences on a range of law enforcement issues.

In 1995, together with other law enforcement officials, I was invited to a conference on the restructuring of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police. I made a presentation to senior members of the Buenos Aires Provincial Government, Judiciary and Police on the change process within the AFP which was well received and considered.

One of the essential attributes for a liaison officer in Latin America is to be able to speak Spanish. This is expected by local senior police as very few of them speak English. Policing is about communicating — a truism which is even greater in the liaison officer role.

The AFP's presence in Latin America is essential to our ability to gain an overall appreciation of those illegal activities which emanate from the region and which continue to have an impact on Australian society.

Our efforts now and in the future in combating international and transnational crime will require continual assessment and inevitable expansion to enable the AFP to remain in the vanguard of international policing.


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