A cocaína que matou Nino Vieira

By Nikolaj Nielsen . BRUSSELS - The price and demand for cocaine in Europe remains high as shipments through West African transit countries to EU destinations has dropped. Less cocaine is being trafficked into Europe via West Africa, says the United Nations (Photo: US federal government) . A report released on Monday (25 February) by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says the cocaine tonnage arriving into Europe from West Africa has dropped to 18 in 2010, down from a 2007 peak of 47. “While this is good news, it does not take a lot of cocaine to cause trouble in a region with poverty and governance problems,” says the UNODC report. The region is also a hotbed of weapons smuggling, methamphetamine production for crystal meth, fraudulent medicines, and maritime piracy. But the cocaine traffic is driven by a lucrative EU market. The white powder comes primarily from Colombia, Bolivia and Peru via West Africa before it reaches city streets in Europe where demand has more than doubled in the past two decades. In Brazil’s largest port at Santos, Nigerian groups are said to organise up to 30 percent of the cocaine exports by ship or container, “up from negligible levels a few years earlier”, notes the UN. The money generated exceeds the GDP of some of the transit countries. Criminals use the extraordinary wealth to buy off the political elite that fuels corruption and in some cases topples governments. Assassinations are not uncommon. The ‘narco-state’ of Guinea-Bissau saw its president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, shot dead by a rival military commander in 2009 over his alleged role in the lucrative cocaine trade with Columbian cartels. EUobserver.com