Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2009
HIS EXCELLENCY
MR MAURICIO
RODRIGUEZ MUNERA
Q340 Mr Streeter: During our visit
to Holland last week it was suggested to us that many people in
Colombia work in the cocaine trade—and you have just give
us a figure and that is very helpful, thank you—but in their
mindset they are not necessarily doing anything wrong, and in
their eyes it is a normal nine to five job. Is that a fair reflection,
do you think, of what people do think in Colombia and why is that
and what could the government do about that?
HE Rodriguez: I think that is
a fair statement. Of these 263,000 people that are involved in
the production they do not really do it because they are into
drug trading or they are trying to become drug barons, whatever,
but most of them are just peasants that do not have any other
alternative—no good alternative—and they need to pay
for their needs. So they are given the seeds, the fertilisers
and somebody will come six months later to buy their crops and
so for them it is just subsistence. If somebody comes with another
kind of crop, the government, and gives them the same help, the
same assistance they will—and in fact it has been proven
in the past years—move into another crop. But they are not
aware of the damage that this is causing; they do not know what
they are doing. In most cases they are peasants in isolated areas;
they do not have any kind of education and they do not have many
alternatives for their subsistence. So they are in the hands of
these drug barons that are very effective in convincing them to
produce these coca leaves and they will do it because they need
to feed their children.
Q341 Mr Streeter: So is it illegal
to grow cocaine in Colombia?
HE Rodriguez: Absolutely, it is
completely illegal and that is why the government is eradicating
these crops and offering alternatives to the peasants. If I may
complement that question: I think that there is a very important,
disturbing element in all this cocaine production in Colombia,
which is the role played by the FARC guerrilla. The FARC guerrilla
is the main producer and trader of cocaine in Colombia and in
the rest of the world. It is very important to understand that.
Chairman: We will be moving on to the
FARC a little later on.
Q342 David Davies: Your Excellency,
obviously this is polite speaking but do you ever get frustrated
that people, perhaps even British members of Parliament obviously
seem to think that Colombia is the problem here; the cocaine comes
from Colombia, therefore we will send MPs out to Colombia and
we will ask the Ambassador what is being done in Colombia. Whereas,
in actual fact could it not be argued that the problem is entirely
in Western Europe where the demand for these drugs exist and that
perhaps you should be sending your MPs to find out what we are
doing to stop people buying these drugs, which are ruining your
environment, your economy, corrupting your country and causing
all sorts of problems. Is it not us who should be apologising
to you for allowing drug dealers in this country and drug takers
to basically get away with it with just a slap on the wrist?
HE Rodriguez: Sir, thank you very
much for that question and for that comment. Yes, sometimes we
are very frustrated and we feel that we are the victims and that
the treatment that the world gives us is unjust, pointing fingers
at Colombia and blaming us for the whole problem. But we cannot
go to the other extreme and say it is the consumers that are to
blame. I think that we have to share responsibility; I think that
is the problem both of producers and consumers and we have to
work together to fight against that drug trade. We should not
see other countries as enemies but as allies in this fight against
drug production and consumption. Each of us has to do whatever
we need to do in our countries to make sure that drug production
and consumption comes down, and I believe that that is the best
way to solve the problem instead of trying to blame it only on
one country or one single nation as being responsible.
Q343 Chairman: Mr Davies and I and
other members of the Committee went to Rotterdam, as I have said,
and we saw the physical pain that people have when the barons
make them swallow pellets of cocaine and a young woman of 19,
who had a very large container, about half the size of this bottle,
inserted in her vagina and she travelled to Holland and almost
died because of the fact that she was going through such pain.
So what is your view about the drugs mules; what can we do more
in order to try and stop people acting as drugs mules?
HE Rodriguez: The mules are a
terrible, horrible nightmare and it is very negative that this
happens. Unfortunately these mules can make a big amount of money—some
informal estimates describe those mules as making $5000 per trip
if they are successful.
Q344 Chairman: How does $5000 compare
to the annual income of a Colombian?
HE Rodriguez: That is a very good
point.
Q345 Chairman: What is the annual
income?
HE Rodriguez: The minimum wage
in Colombia is approximately $200 a month, so this would be the
equivalent of almost two years of income.
Q346 Chairman: For one visit.
HE Rodriguez: For only one visit.
So you find, unfortunately, desperate people, in some cases unemployed,
need an alternative income. It does not justify what they are
doing because what they are doing is illegal and immoral but this
explains why they do it. Sometimes they are desperate. In other
cases they are not just victims—they want to make money,
to make a lot of money, taking a small risk and trying to have
a lucrative business and to have a profit. Just to complete the
answer, there are more than 8000 Colombian mules in prisons all
over the world.
Q347 Chairman: How many in the United
Kingdom, do you know?
HE Rodriguez: I do not have the
number in the United Kingdom.
Q348 Chairman: We will find out.
Taking up Mr Davies' very, very important point what is your government
doing in making representations to the British Government and
saying, "Why are you not doing more to stop the consumption
of cocaine?" Are you making any representations of that kind?
HE Rodriguez: We are permanently
talking to the UK Government and I must say that we do have cooperation
and support and we appreciate that cooperation and that support.
Obviously we would like more and more to be done in many areas,
in terms of financial resources, to increase the fight against
the eradication.
Q349 Chairman: We will come on to
that in a minute.
HE Rodriguez: But we do have a
good relationship and we are permanently in contact—almost
every day we have some kind of discussion in that area.
Chairman: Excellent.
Q350 Ms Buck: Could you tell us a
little about the government strategy for disrupting the smugglers'
networks and in particular whether the government has a strategy
for seizing financial assets where they can?
HE Rodriguez: Thank you very much
for the question. The total seizure of assets in the last eight
years accounts to 32,000. These are frozen bank accounts, real
estate, vehicles, farms—30,352 properties have been seized
by the government in the last eight years. In addition to this
there is a seizure of assets and another effective way of fighting
the drug barons. This is very effective because they are afraid
of this other tool to fight their drug trafficking, which is the
extradition of drug barons to other countries. In the past ten
years we have extradited 942 Colombians to countries with which
we have extradition treaties and that have been requested by the
local judicial authorities. And this has been increasing in the
last ten years. In 1999 the extraditions were 25, last year they
were almost 250; so year after year we have been increasing this
judicial cooperation with the other nations that request the drug
barons to be judged in the countries where they are taking the
drugs.
Q351 Ms Buck: Thank you very much
for that. Given the distorting effect upon the country's economy
and society of the trade it would be utterly remarkable if there
was not some impact in terms of corruption and obviously the money
involved is so great. Are you able to give us any idea of what
the scale is of investigations currently going on against people
in government and other enforcement agencies, and what resources
are dedicated to actually pursuing that challenge?
HE Rodriguez: That is a good point.
It is very difficult if not impossible to estimate the impact
of the drug business in corruption, but we continuously have had
in Colombia in the past 40 years the cases of politicians being
bribed by the drug barons, of judges being bribed by the drug
barons, of journalists being bribed, and that is destroying and
destabilising the Colombian democracy and Colombian institutions.
So we do not have any specific calculation of that impact but
I can tell you that living in my country for this past 40 years
it is a daily reality in our country to see the immense power
of the drug barons because they have plenty of money to buy the
minds of politicians, journalists, Congress members. It is all
over the place and it has been a very difficult battle to win
over them because they have too much money.
Q352 Ms Buck: It is a tragedy and
it is the fear and the money together.
HE Rodriguez: It is a tragedy,
it is a disaster and we have been fighting very hard against this.
We have been successful—and this is very important—in
destroying the main cartels in Columbia. You remember the Pablo
Escobar cartel.
Q353 Chairman: Yes.
HE Rodriguez: The famous Pablo
Escobar; he was killed 15 years ago; and the Cali cartel. The
big cartels have been destroyed but they have been replaced by
plenty of small cartels.
Chairman: Your Excellency, what you say
is absolutely fascinating; it is just that we need to vacate the
room shortly, so if you could make your answers briefer I would
be most grateful; and to the members of the Committee if you could
questions briefer that would help the Ambassador, I know.
Q354 Patrick Mercer: Your Excellency,
how do the guerrilla fighters hamper efforts to tackle cocaine
production and trading?
HE Rodriguez: It is very important
to understand this connection between the guerrilla and the drug
production. Let me quote another report from the Drug Enforcement
Agency Chief of Operations. It says: "Nine out of every ten
grams of cocaine sent to the US have passed through the FARC at
some point." So they are really a cartel. The FARC are the
most important cartel in producing and trading cocaine in Colombia.
There is another report by the US State Department that says that
the Colombian Police have been able to eradicate 130,000 acres
of coca through aerial spraying and 96,000 hectares through manual
eradication, "despite entrenched armed resistance by the
FARC, a drug trafficking organisation that is also a designated
foreign terrorist organisation. If harvested and refined this
eradicated coca could have yielded hundreds of metric tonnes of
cocaine worth millions of dollars on US streets". So I think
it is very important, and there are some other estimates that
confirm the total connection between guerrillas and drug production.
That is why it is so important to fight the guerrillas in Columbia;
it is not just because they are illegal armed groups, it is because
they are producing and trading cocaine and they are doing terrorism
with the money that they get from the cocaine trade.
Q355 Martin Salter: Your Excellency,
I am looking at the amount of money that has been pumped into
Colombia and Peru and Bolivia from the USA and from the European
Union for alternative development programmes and to assist with
the war on drugs, but you are very keen to point the finger—and
quite rightly so—at FARC, the guerrilla group; but should
we as British parliamentarians and people responsible for part
of that aid that is flowing into that region not be concerned
with the fact that, as I understand it at the moment, senior Columbian
officials, also the Vice President and over 70 members of Congress
and senior Colombian army officials are being investigated for
links to FARC. How endemic, how entrenched is the narcotics corruption
at the highest levels of the Colombian Government? One assumes
it must be otherwise these investigations would not be taking
place.
HE Rodriguez: Unfortunately there
have been cases in which members of Congress have been found to
have relations with drug barons. There have been cases of members
of the armed forces involved in drug dealing but they are isolated
cases, and specifically for the armed forces it is absolutely
clear that the immense majority of the armed forces are heroes
and actually fighting a very difficult war against drug traffickers.
Therefore, I would not be concerned in supporting the armed forces
of Colombia because even though there have been some cases they
are completely isolated cases. In relation to other cases of corruption
there has been a significant increase in prosecution in Colombia
against the corruption related to the drug trade.
Martin Salter: How is the investigation
going against the Vice President and the members of Congress?
70 members of Congress do not sound like isolated—that sounds
pretty wholesale to me.
Q356 Chairman: How big is the Congress?
HE Rodriguez: But they are not
related to the drug trade.
Q357 Martin Salter: Their links with
FARC.
HE Rodriguez: In most cases they
are related to paramilitaries—ties with the militaries.
The congressmen are being investigated because of their ties to
the paramilitaries, not because of their ties to the drug trade.
The majority of them are indicated of being helpful of the paramilitaries
which have been demobilised by President Uribe's Government, but
when President Uribe arrived to power in the year 2002 one of
his promises and his commitments was to demobilise the paramilitary
so that the state, the armed forces could recover the control
of the territory without the need, without the support of the
paramilitary forces. In fact more than 52,000 paramilitaries and
guerrillas have demobilised in the country in the past seven years—52,000.
This is one of the most successful demobilisation programmes in
history.
Q358 Martin Salter: Can I follow
up on that point because I am getting confused? You said quite
clearly that there is a distinct link between paramilitary groups
and the drugs trade and then on the other hand you said that you
have 70-odd members of Congress being investigated for links to
the paramilitaries and you said that that is nothing to do with
the drug trade. Surely any link with the paramilitary is also
linked back into the drugs trade.
HE Rodriguez: There is a indirect
link in the sense that some of those paramilitaries have financed
their legal activities through the drug trade, but for the members
of Parliament that are being investigated at this moment it is
not because they are trading in drugs and making money in drugs,
but just because they have supported politically the activities
of the paramilitaries defending people against the guerrilla,
which is of course wrong; the paramilitaries are as bad for Colombian
democracy as the guerrillas. And this is as a response to the
lack of efficiency of the state and the armed forces in controlling
the security province of Colombia. But when President Uribe arrived
to power he said that the paramilitaries are not the solution;
we need to strengthen the armed forces and we need to demobilise
the paramilitary so that we can fight against the guerrillas and
drug traffickers, but with the legitimate tools which is the law
and the armed forces.
Q359 Mr Winnick: As far as the UK
Serious and Organised Crime Agency is concerned, Ambassador, they
have powers given, presumably by your government, to arrest drug
traffickers; is that so? They have powers to arrest in your country?
HE Rodriguez: No; you mean if
the SOCA has any authority to arrest? It does not have.
Chairman: It does not have any powers.
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