Mexico's powerful drug cartels are buying drugs directly from the FARC, Colombia's deputy Defense Minister Sergio Jaramillo said Tuesday at a hemispheric meeting on crime.
The finance chief of the FARC rebel unit along the Ecuador-Colombia border is the main contact with the Mexican gangs that purchase cocaine from the rebels, said Jaramillo.
"We are particularly worried about the strengthening connections between Mexican cartels and the FARC," Jaramillo said. "The Mexican cartels are buying directly from the FARC."
He identified the finance chief as Oliver Solarte, a member of the 48th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which operates on the border.
Jaramillo refused to give more details, saying he didn't want to compromise intelligence reports. He spoke at the inauguration of a two-day security meeting of the Organization of American States in Mexico City.
Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Colombia on March 3 over a cross-border raid by Colombia on a FARC camp that killed a top rebel leader and 24 others. The camp was located in an area where the 48th Front operates.
Jaramillo said the FARC controls most of Colombia's cocaine trade, though right-wing paramilitary bands and other mafias are also involved.
The FARC in recent years has often operated on the Ecuadorean side of a highly porous jungle border. It smuggles arms and other supplies into Colombia and smuggles out much of the cocaine that funds the rebels' more than four-decade-old insurgency.
U.S. officials say, however, that Venezuela has become the FARC's preferred cocaine smuggling route. (AP)
