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Colombia's great drug war swindle
by Adriaan Alsema July 13, 2020
Colombia’s defense ministry has been reporting inflated statistics on the forced eradication of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, multiple counternarcotics officials told weekly Semana.
Eight civilian eradicators and counternarcotics officials confirmed the fraud that reportedly has been going on for at least 10 years and is known by the United States embassy.
Colombia’s defense ministry told Semana it “has not detected any allegedly false reports in relation to the 2019 eradication,” but was contradicted by one of its own officials.
. . .
Meeting targets without results
The forced eradication statistics are reportedly inflated to guarantee that targets set by Bogota and Washington DC are met, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is given manipulated statistics.
Furthermore, the fraud serves to justify the enormous cost of the notoriously ineffective counternarcotics efforts that cost American and Colombian tax payers $100 million (COP361 billlion) last year alone, the anonymous sources told Semana.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-great-drug-war-swindle/
