Better fight against drug trafficking. It was one of the priorities of the joint visit to Guyana by Gérald Darmanin, Eric Dupond-Moretti and Gabriel Attal, which ended on Saturday October 1. On the island, thehe transport of cocaine to the metropolis is a real scourge and the traffickers never cease to show ingenuity.
>> Cocaine trafficking between Guyana and mainland France: the difficult fight against the mules
In Cayenne, cis a bit like the cocaine museum visited by the Ministers of the Interior, Justice and Public Accounts in the premises of the prefecture. The latest entries are presented on tables. There are pellets, ingested cocaine surrounded by plastic at the risk of an overdose, which are used in almost half of the cases. But the drug is also hidden on the body with sachets taped to the skin or concealed in the underwear. Cocaine is also carried in luggage. Three kilos were seized from dried fish on Friday, September 30, for example.
The drug is also passed in liquid form, such as in bottles of rum or in fruits and vegetables. “There, they were grapefruits. When you see him, you don’t have the impression that there is any particular handling, he is really made up. And afterwards, it’s in terms of weight or also the hardness of the fruit which can challenge them to us, give us a clue that it can be filled with cocaine”, Explain Sébastien, a customs agent. “We [les trafiquants] may have done this in other fruits as well. We even did that in green beans where the little seeds were filled with cocaine.”
So much for the airport, where the so-called “mules” depart from. Large quantities are also shipped by sea, again with increasingly resourceful traffickers. Example with these 600 kilos seized two years ago, thanks to false seals. “The drugs are inserted into freight transport containers. So they spot the lead number. They have lead duplicates made in Suriname, so in less than 24 hours, we saw that it had been done”, affirms Yannick Denux, who heads the narcotics office in Guyana.
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“They open the container, they break the original lead, they put the bags of drugs inside. Then, they close the container with a copy of the lead, they put in the container with the bags another lead also ready to use. ’employment. And on the other side, they break the lead again, they take out their goods and put back a copy lead. And so, in fact, it’s completely invisible to the police,” he explains.
To better control containers, the government has just announced the use of a mobile scanner at the port of Cayenne from 2024. By then, as at the airport, traffickers will no doubt have found new techniques . This gives the impression of an insurmountable challenge to the Attorney General of Cayenne, who speaks of a “Cocaine Himalayas”.