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From INFO-RUSS-request@smarty.ece.jhu.edu Wed Oct 1 00:10:46 1997 Message-Id: <9709302124.AA14700@smarty.ece.jhu.edu> Errors-To: INFO-RUSS-request@smarty.ece.jhu.edu Sender: INFO-RUSS-request@smarty.ece.jhu.edu Precedence: bulk From: info-russ@smarty.ece.jhu.edu To: info-russ@smarty.ece.jhu.edu Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 17:09:10 +0100 Subject: INFO-RUSS: Reuter: Russian+Russian Drug Cartels Priority: normal
--------------------------------------------------------------------- This is INFO-RUSS broadcast (1200+ subscribers). Home page, information, and archives: http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/inforuss.html To post, or to subscribe/unsubscribe, mail to info-russ@smarty.ece.jhu.edu INFO-RUSS assumes no responsibility for the information/views of its users. --------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Reuters New Media] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monday September 29 9:06 AM EDT Post: Russian Mob, Drug Cartels Joining Forces WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Russian organized crime groups, flush with dollars, are forming alliances with Colombian drug traffickers in the Caribbean, acquiring cocaine for delivery to Europe and providing weapons to Latin American mafias, The Washington Post reported Monday. The newspaper, quoting U.S., European and Latin American law enforcement officials, said the Russian groups were also opening banks and front companies across the Caribbean, largely using them to launder millions of dollars from drug sales and other criminal activities. The officials were quoted as saying that the growing alliances between Russian and Colombian criminal organizations were the most dangerous trend in drug smuggling in the Western Hemisphere. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's national drug control policy director, said the Russian groups were among the "most threatening criminal organizations based in the United States." The newspaper quoted him and other sources as saying that the Russian groups offered drug cartels access to sophisticated weapons and brought access to new drug markets in the former Soviet Union at a time when consumption was falling in the United States. The sources told the Post recent undercover operations had detected attempts by Russian groups to sell Colombian drug traffickers a submarine, helicopters and surface-to-air missiles.