23.33% of all cocaine seizures recorded in the country in the last 15 months took place in the multimodal port of Punta Caucedo, as this newspaper was able to confirm after examining all the reports of narcotics seizures made by authorities.

From August 2020 to December of this year, or about 15 months, in Punta Caucedo, about seven metric tons were seized, out of just over 30 tons occupied nationwide.

Between August 2016 and the same month in 2020, only 3.2 tonnes of cocaine were seized in the port, or 45.6% of the total taken in the past 15 months.

During the investigation of the legal files of subjugation of people arrested in drug trafficking from the port, certain reasons were found for this movement of cocaine: operators of goods handling equipment at the terminal were included in the traffic networks.

“The supervision is weak or limited, which is why they have a certain freedom to carry out the pallet of the containers so as to facilitate the introduction of the drugs”, comments a person familiar with what occurs there.

“But they organize them and also put them away in such a way that the control by the authorities is difficult”, specifies the same person consulted.

Added to this is a low or poor resolution of the images captured by the surveillance cameras installed, depending on the people consulted.

One said that security cameras do not monitor areas considered sensitive in the container yard and that some areas of the terminal “currently have dark areas”.

“In some areas of the port’s perimeter fence, we see that the trench-type barbed wire placed at the top of the fence is missing or in poor condition. This allowed people to have entered at night to hide drug caches in the containers, “said an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his complaint.

It is being renovated.
The multimodal port of Punta Caucedo is undergoing redevelopment work that would allow it to increase its cargo handling capacity by 45%, increasing it from 1.4 million to 2.2 million teus (the equivalent unit at twenty feet. This represents the unit of measurement for maritime transport).

Authorities hope this expansion will allow the terminal to become a hub for the Americas.

Collaboration with drug smuggling operations has also reached port employees who manage ship transit information, providing drug traffickers with routes, times and days of entry and exit of ships and containers. .

“They do this by sending photos of the shipping documents available at the port,” warns one of the people consulted.

Outside the multimodal, last Wednesday, the DNCD reported the capture of 282 packages of cocaine off the coast of the province of Altagracia.

Anti-narcotic agents have received an alert that several individuals introduce an unknown amount of controlled substances.

End of 2021

Last case
A week ago, the National Directorate of Drug Control (DNCD) and prosecutors seized 266 packages of cocaine in the multimodal port of Caucedo.

The drugs were seized in eleven packages containing the 266 packages of the substance hidden in a container in transit from the United States.