The patrol boat crew The Fighter shattered, on November 28, 2023, the score of drug seizures made by the national navy in the Antilles: that day, 3.5 tons of cocaine intended for Europe were discovered on a Venezuelan fishing vessel , not far from Barbados.
On the night of January 5, a new catch noticed by the police in Guadeloupe: 366 kilograms of white powder, which men were loading into a vehicle in the parking lot of the very busy Petit-Havre beach in Le Gosier. by families. Among the traffickers arrested, three Guadeloupeans and three foreigners, who arrived from the neighboring island of Dominica, periodically singled out in French legal files for arms and drug trafficking.
Police and justice officials met by The world report an alarming situation. In the West Indies, “2023 was a high year”, declares Alexandre Huguet, head of the Caribbean branch of the Anti-Narcotics Office (Ofast). The service which, according to him, employs “around forty people in Martinique, around twenty in Guadeloupe and a detachment in Saint-Martin”intercepted a total of 11 tonnes of narcotics in 2023.
In the region, traffic is increasing due to increased production in South America and “disaffection for cocaine on the American market, which is switching to synthetic drugs”as explained by Clarisse Taron, the public prosecutor of Fort-de-France, seat of the specialized interregional jurisdiction. “All this means that Europe has become the sales market”, she continues. The French departments become “the South American cocaine rebound zone”underlines the magistrate, who describes “a fundamental movement, affecting, for several years, both the ports of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyana”.
“Prospects for easy money”
As expected, the systematization of controls on departure from Cayenne airport during the year 2023 caused a “partial carryover phenomenon” from Guyana mules, the little hands of trafficking, now leaving from Martinique to Paris, indicates Mr. Huguet. The head of Ofast discusses “around 80 mules entrusted to Ofast” in 2023 at Fort-de-France airport, compared to 50 to 60 people in previous years: travelers trying to board Paris with cocaine, but also, in the other direction, “cases of mules intercepted by Martinique customs who came from mainland France with cannabis resin”. Very often, it is“individuals lured because of debts contracted, economic difficulties or prospects of easy money”he describes.
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