Cocaine market sees new players, bananas and Amazon submarines

BOGOTA: The global cocaine market is changing. Colombia is still the biggest producer of the drug, but other actors are taking an ever bigger role in manufacturing and distributing it, according to a report based on thousands of Colombian prosecutor´s files leaked by hackers.

A group of around a hundred journalists has deciphered some seven million emails and 38,000 files leaked by the Guacamaya hacktivist group which in 2022 broke into the computer systems of security agencies and armies from Mexico, Chile, Peru, Salvador and Colombia.

The so-called “Narcofiles” report outlines the networks of cocaine production and trafficking around the world.

“The market is changing,” Nathan Jaccard, Latin America editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a consortium of investigative journalists which accessed the files, told AFP.

Colombia cultivated a record 230,000 hectares of coca leaf in 2022, and produced 1,738 tonnes of cocaine, according to the United Nations.

The “Narcofiles” also revealed the growing role of the banana industry in the export of cocaine, and an increase in trafficking along routes such as the Amazon River, from which more and more submarines loaded with cocaine head to the Atlantic. —AFP