InSight Crime

#NewSpecial | InSight Crime’s 2025 Cocaine Seizure Round-Up. bit.ly/4w2VYKn

👉InSight Crime is launching a special section on elections in Latin America and the Caribbean. For more than 15 years, we have been investigating how organized crime influences electoral processes and governance in the region. Read our coverage. bit.ly/4dKR6kK

🇵🇾 | Interpol agents in Paraguay arrested a businessman involved in the Dakovo case, an arms-trafficking scheme uncovered in 2023 that implicated corrupt officials in Paraguay in selling weapons to crime groups in Brazil. Read more about the case. bit.ly/3Scs84o

🇩🇴 | Dominican authorities just seized one ton of cocaine and arrested three Venezuelans aboard a go-fast boat. Read more about one of the Caribbean’s busiest drug pipelines: bit.ly/4fH4dGh

🇨🇳 | China just imposed export controls on three precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl. Learn more about China’s role in the global precursor supply chain: bit.ly/3xnqR2z

#NewAnalysis | What the Murder of a Former Rebel Tells Us About Nicaragua’s Criminal Regime. bit.ly/4dOzBjJ

🇧🇷 | Investigators claim the First Capital Command (PCC) used a transport company as a financial arm to move and conceal illicit funds, in a scheme allegedly linked to a Brazilian influencer. Learn more about the links between influencers and organized crime here: bit.ly/4u5BYpa

Some Balkan criminals in Latin America serve as emissaries for criminal groups in their home countries, while others act independently, setting up their own operations. More on the types of Balkan criminal actors in the Americas here: bit.ly/3RsMwQM

🇲🇽 | Last year, the discovery of an extermination and forced labor camp run by the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG) sparked outrage in Mexico and underscored the group’s brutal recruitment methods. Now, search collectives say they’ve found another camp. bit.ly/4c7u0DR

🇺🇾 | Parties, designer clothes, and jewels are cited in the money laundering case against Gianina García Troche, the mother of Sebastián Marset’s children. She is facing trial for allegedly laundering million of his cocaine profits. Learn more: bit.ly/4dhcz3m

Figures like Dritan Gjika and Dritan Rexhepi are just two of a long line of influential Balkan drug traffickers that set up shop in Ecuador. What role do these figures play in the underworld? Are they linked to mafia groups? More here: bit.ly/3RsMwQM

🇸🇻 Carlos Ernesto Mojica Lechuga, alias "Viejo Lin" was a top leader of El Salvador’s Barrio 18 gang who lived through a one-time truce with the MS13. He died in prison this week from liver complications. Revisit our interview with the infamous gang leader. bit.ly/4dzU6As

🇻🇪 | A murky and implausible police purge, an incomplete amnesty riddled with irregularities, and bilateral cooperation with no clear results. The security measures implemented in Venezuela have yet to translate into real change. Learn more here: bit.ly/4eWTSpw

🇧🇷 | A Brazilian influencer was arrested in an operation targeting an alleged First Capital Command (PCC) money laundering scheme. Learn more about the links between influencers and Brazil’s organized crime: bit.ly/4u5BYpa

🇲🇽 | Authorities in Mexico’s western state of Jalisco have reportedly uncovered another clandestine killing camp and crematorium. Read more about the links between these sites and the powerful Jalisco Cartel (CJNG). bit.ly/4c7u0DR

🇲🇽 🇺🇸 | Precursor chemical suppliers, clandestine producers, trafficking networks, and local gangs all shape the fentanyl market. Explore this interactive visualization by Luke Curran tracing routes from Mexico’s Pacific ports to the US border: bit.ly/3RpUpq7

🇨🇴 | Ahead of the upcoming presidential elections in Colombia, several criminal groups have announced unilateral ceasefires. The latest group to do so was the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group. Read their profile here: bit.ly/3dkFk53

🇺🇸 | The US Defense Department’s internal watchdog is evaluating whether strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific on alleged drug vessels followed approved guidelines. How have these strikes unfolded? bit.ly/4oxipDs

🇺🇾 | There's new evidence in the Marset case as Paraguay releases over 300 pages of evidence of money laundering involving the mother of this children. Learn more about the accusation against her in our analysis: bit.ly/4dhcz3m

🇻🇪Why is the deportation of a key Chavista figure to the US so important? 👉We explain in this week’s On the Radar. bit.ly/3RDjf5W

Balkan criminals have a long history of involvement in Latin America’s drug trade, funneling tons of cocaine towards Europe’s ever-growing consumer markets. Read more about the different roles these figures take in Latin America here: bit.ly/3RsMwQM