LatinNews Daily Report - 02 September 2013

SECURITY | A drugs first in the DR. On 1 September the Dominican Republic (DR)’s national police and national investigations department (DNI) announced that they had dismantled the biggest and most sophisticated underground cocaine laboratory in the Caribbean. According to the DR’s attorney general, Francisco Domínguez Brito, and police chief, Major General Manuel Castro Castillo, authorities seized more than 230kgs of cocaine paste base during an operation which took place on an estate in the municipality of San Cristóbal, the capital of the eponymous southern province. The estate was first raided on 22 August and two Colombians, John Jairo Roldán Estrada and Ángel Fernández Vargas, are currently being held in remand on suspicion of drug trafficking offenses. Castro Castillo said that yesterday’s discovery of the laboratory, which is believed to have processed more than 7,000kgs of cocaine, marked a precedent as the first large-scale cocaine processing lab in the country to use Colombian techniques. The US government estimates that approximately 4% of the cocaine shipped to North America and Europe passes through Hispaniola Island, much of it through the DR. According to the most recent (March 2013) International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) in 2012 Dominican authorities seized approximately 10 tonnes (t) of cocaine, a significant increase over 2011, when Dominican authorities seized 6.71t.

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