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)