President Gustavo Petro announced this Friday that his Government is carrying out the “largest anti-smuggling operation in the history” of the nation.
“The smuggling mafias are the same as those of drug trafficking, financially powerful, they enter hundreds of containers of merchandise generally originating in China and East Asia every month to launder cocaine dollars,” the president wrote on his social networks.
Petro also pointed out the infiltration of these smuggling networks in different sectors of public power. “They have deeply penetrated politics, the Police at its highest levels, the customs and port institutions of the Government,” he stated. “Smuggling enters with an official seal through the country’s ports and uses the regulations designed to protect them against the national industry,” he added.
In mid-March, Colombian authorities captured Ricardo Orozco Baeza, a prominent smuggler known in the criminal world under the alias ‘El Benceso’. At that time, Petro described his arrest as “the biggest blow to smuggling in the history of Colombia,” since the criminal would be responsible for the entry of 80% of prohibited merchandise into the country. With RT