COSTA RICA NEWS — “Mexican drug cartels are arming Costa Rica with high-powered weapons to fight opposing groups,” said publicly the country’s Fiscal General (Attorney General), Jorge Chavarría, in San Carlos last Thursday.
The Comisión de Seguridad Interinstitucional Sancarleña (Interagency Security Committee of San Carlos), invited Chavarría to a meeting with local businessmen, for them express their concern about the crime wave in the canton of San Carlos, .
At the event, businessmen urged the Attorney General to open a drug trafficking and money laundering prosecution office in the area.
It was during the meeting the chief prosecutor commented on the penetration of foreign based organized crime in the country, increasingly using Costa Ricans, becoming increasingly violent, using “war like” weapons.
“In one case, (criminals) were about to activate a grenade. If the explosion had occurred today we would be lamenting the consequences,” said Chavarría without elaborating on the details.
The Attorney General endorsed the idea of a specialized office in the northern area of the country, but noted that due to budget cuts in the Poder Judicial the project would have to wait until 2016.
One of the complaints made by a local businessman, Bladimir Arroyo, a member of the Committee, is that “supposed” exporters are shipping products to Europe at below cost, affecting honest producers.
Chavarria, told the Sancarleños that the situation requires a new social strategy to counter the penetration of the drug cartels in the country. “We cannot not allow any drug organization to grow, strengthen … that is why I insist that we must work together to not suffer the extreme violence that in Mexico, “said the attorney general.
The arrival of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel to Costa Rica was detected in 2006, when a local boat was detained with 116 kilos of cocaine that belonged to that organization.
Subsequently, the authorities acknowledged that Costa Rica was being used by the group as a warehouse for drugs.
In 2009, a helicopter crashed in the Cerro de La Muerte (southeast of San José) with 374 kilos of cocaine, the illegal drugs also belonging to the cartel.
More recently, it was revealed that there is also the presence of the Knights Templar cartel, a native of Michoacan, Mexico in our country.
In fact, in 2013, the Judicial Police said the group responsible for the murder of a Tica model and a Guatemalan, occurring in November 2012, on Ruta 27. Authorities said at the time that cartel was installed in the country for more than one year.
Source: La Nacion – Fiscal general acusa a carteles mexicanos de armar a ticos
