NEW YORK, (Reuters) – A group of men accused of trying to set up a cocaine-smuggling route into Liberia from South America has been arrested in a U.S.-led operation and will face charges in New York, officials said yesterday.
The eight men were attempting to make the West African state a base of operations from which to move cocaine to Europe’s highly lucrative market, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials said.
Court documents unsealed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court revealed the sting benefited from the undercover support of Fumbah Sirleaf, the son of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. As head of the state security agency, he pretended to accept bribes and recorded conversations with the would-be traffickers, the documents showed.
“Drug-trafficking organizations based in South America, predominantly in Columbia and Venezuela, have increasingly exploited countries in West Africa as trans-shipment hubs for importing by air and by sea hundreds of metric tonnes of cocaine … worth literally billions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told reporters.
Calling this a “very, very real, not aspirational, plan,” Bharara said the defendants were planning to ship a total of six metric tonnes of cocaine into Liberia.
Europe’s strong currency, growing demand and higher price per kilo (2.2 lb) have become strong incentives for drug groups in South America to increase sales there, DEA chief of operations Thomas Harrigan said.
More than 100 metric tonnes of cocaine per year is shipped to Africa from South America, he said.
But Liberia, unlike other West African states, alerted U.S. authorities when in 2007 the suspects began setting up the transport route, DEA officials said.
