When the presidents of Amazon nations including Brazil, Peru and Colombia meet at a regional summit next week, they will train their sights on a new breed of criminal just as comfortable chopping down the rainforest as shipping drugs overseas.
With booming profits, many of the drug gangs in the Amazon are now laundering the money through illegal land speculation, logging, mining and other means, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warned in its annualCharles Nascimento, a Brazilian Federal Police officer and veteran of the Amazon drugs beat, said criminal groups often use existing drug routes to get illegally harvested gold and wood to market.
Lula - who has staked his international reputation on ending the rampant deforestation that surged under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro - has reeled off a flurry of measures to combat environmental crime since taking office on Jan. 1. Neighboring countries - as well as agencies in developed countries importing illegal wood and gold - will be invited to send permanent representatives to the center to help coordinate investigations, said Valdecy Urquiza, head of the Federal Police's international cooperation directorate.
Past international meetings and agreements have largely failed to generate much cooperation between wary national police forces in the Amazon, said Robert Muggah, lead author of the U.N. report's chapter on organized crime in the Amazon.
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