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Kingpins and Corruption: Targeting Transnational Organized Crime in the Americas

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Kingpins and Corruption: Targeting Transnational Organized Crime in the Americas AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE KINGPINS AND CORRUPTION: TARGETING TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME IN THE AMERICAS WITH OPENING REMARKS BY SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL) OPENING REMARKS: MARCO RUBIO, US SENATE (R-FL) PANEL DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS: DOUGLAS FARAH, IBI CONSULTANTS; JOSEPH HUMIRE, CENTER FOR A SECURE FREE SOCIETY; ROGER F. NORIEGA, AEI; CELINA REALUYO, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY MODERATOR: KIRSTEN D. MADISON, AEI 3:45–5:25 PM MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2017 EVENT PAGE: http://www.aei.org/events/kingpins-and-corruption-targeting- transnational-organized-crime-in-the-americas/ TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION – WWW.DCTMR.COM DANIELLE PLETKA: Good afternoon, everybody. If I could ask everybody who’s filing in to just be seated. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everybody. And welcome to the American Enterprise Institute. I’m Danielle Pletka. I’m the senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies here, and I am genuinely delighted that we have Senator Marco Rubio here with us today to help us roll out this new report. I’ve got my props here. I feel like Vanna White. “Kingpins and Corruption.” It is the product of the AEI Working Group on Transnational Organized Crime in the Americas, run by our visiting scholar, Ambassador Roger Noriega. I don’t think that Marco Rubio needs a lot of introduction to this audience, but I’m going to give you a word or two nonetheless. And then I’m going to hand things over and just do a little bit of housekeeping. Marco Rubio is the United States senator from Florida. He was elected in 2010 and reelected in 2016. He’s a member of the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on Foreign Relations. And he has a résumé much, much longer that I’m not going to keep reading. But, to us, he really has been a leader on international affairs, somebody who increasingly our country turns to to hear where we should be going on these issues. And for us at AEI, I know that we’re very proud that he’s been a leader on issues that are of extraordinary importance to us in maintaining support for US engagement globally. The report is — you’re going to hear a lot more about it than you’re going to hear from me at this very moment, but this is a report that’s a little bit different than things that you usually see coming out of the American Enterprise Institute. It’s very practical. It’s very tactical. It’s very focused on what we can do in the here and the now. And the main reason for that is that, frankly, transnational organized crime is an issue, a scourge that we have not spent a great deal of time focusing on as a country. It is at the nexus of a whole series of national security threats to our country. It degrades democracy. It degrades our national security. It degrades our hemisphere, and it introduces threats to us that otherwise would not be here. Just in the context of what this report talks about, earlier this month two Hezbollah operatives were arrested who had been scouting the Panama Canal. The report profiles MS-13, which the Trump administration has been going after, and which is an instrument for all of these disparate threats to our country to come together. So I know that Roger and the senator are going to spend a lot of time talking about these issues. I have a housekeeping item, and I have to read it to you because I don’t understand it because I’m technologically inept. So we are going to be taking questions from the audience through an online system today. You can feel free to submit your questions now, which causes you all to be looking at your phone, so I’m not sure that’s a great thing, but feel free to submit your questions now following the senator’s remarks. To submit a question, you have to go to sli.do, just like it sounds, S-L-I-D-O, dot com, and enter the code AEIEvent. It’s very simple. Enter the code, type in your question, and then it may be chosen to be read on stage. I hope it works. Senator, if we can ask you to come up to the podium. The senator is going to give a few minutes’ address and then sit down with Roger Noriega to take some additional questions and then to take questions from the audience. (Applause.) SENATOR MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Thank you very much. Well, thank you, Danielle. Thank you all for your kind introduction. I want to thank you — I want to thank Ambassador Noriega and the other members of the working group for inviting me here today. And your new report is timely, and your recommendations are important for policymakers in the administration and for lawmakers such as myself in Congress to weigh and to consider. Transnational organized crime isn’t a new threat to the United States and the Western Hemisphere, but it’s an increasingly dangerous one. Transnational organized crime, as the new report warns, resides at the heart of nearly every major threat confronting the Americas today, whether it is the deadly opioid crisis hurting US communities, the catastrophic collapse of oil-rich Venezuela, or debilitating gang violence throughout Central America, which spills over into the streets of American cities. And AEI’s report continues, these crises can be traced to criminal networks that garner billions from the production of illicit drugs, human trafficking, and extortion. While the US government has long acknowledged the threats posed by transnational organized crime, for too many years, it’s not done enough to deal with these threats. Such neglect has led to the death and suffering of far too many people, both in nations throughout our hemisphere and of course here at home. We begin with Venezuela, where the Maduro regime has completely undermined that country’s democratic constitution. It’s imprisoned and tortured its opposition members. It’s killed protesters with impunity. It’s destroyed the nation’s economy. One of the richest countries in the region — one of the richest countries in the world in terms of resources — Venezuela is an oil state that is also rich in farmland, by the way, yet its corrupt and dictatorial government is running out of money and can’t afford to feed its own people. As that nation continues to melt down, the regime’s growing transnational criminal networks are getting exposed. We see the Maduro government is not just a dictatorship. It’s also a criminal enterprise. For example, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President El Aissami on the 13th of February of this year, naming him a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker under the Kingpin Act for playing a significant role in international narcotics trafficking. El Aissami’s main front man, Venezuelan national Samark José Lopez- Bello, was also sanctioned. Last November, a federal court here in the United States convicted two of President Maduro’s nephews — Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and his cousin Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas — for conspiring to ship 800 kilos of cocaine into the United States. Two years ago, the US Justice Department officials told The Wall Street Journal they believe that Diosdado Cabello, a Chavista and former president of the National Assembly, was a head of a drug cartel. So think about that — in Venezuela, the vice president, the president’s nephews, the former president of the National Assembly, are involved or have been accused of being involved in transnational organized crime. In Colombia, we are seeing growing concerns with the implementation of the peace agreement with the FARC. Many FARC weapons remain unaccounted for, and too many FARC members are joining remnant groups and continuing to profit on illegal narcotics trafficking. America’s foreign assistance and military and law enforcement relationship with Colombia must continue. Between fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2016, the US Congress appropriated more than $10 billion in aid under Plan Colombia and successive strategies. Peace in Colombia cannot come at any cost. FARC members who have committed atrocities must be held accountable by Colombia’s judicial system, and Colombia should extradite FARC members indicted in the United States. They should face justice here, too. Yet beyond the FARC and in large part because of the FARC’s decision to come in from the jungle, the explosion of coca cultivation in Colombia is another major concern feeding skepticism about the peace deal. Colombia’s coca production numbers have consistently risen during the peace negotiations, increasing by more than 141 percent from 2012 to 2016, including a sharp rise beginning in 2015. These developments are likely the direct result of the government’s 2015 decision to end the aerial eradication of coca plants. I personally believe it was a mistake, in part, as a concession to the FARC to achieve a peace deal in Colombia. Now, the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest drug gang; the ELN, another FARC-like group that deals in Marxist terrorism and drug trafficking; and paramilitary groups known as bandas criminals, or BACRIM, have emerged as the main beneficiaries of Colombia’s renewed coca production. That Gulf Clan controls 70 percent of Colombia’s cocaine production, according to Colombia’s own police. And the ELN has an estimated 1,500 fighters, making it roughly one-fifth the size of the FARC’s pre-mobilization paramilitary force. In Mexico, we have had a transnational organized crime as a problem on a staggering scale.
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