A week after AP’s Peru drug investigation published, a landmark arrest

Eight days after we published my investigation on how more than a ton of cocaine was being flown daily out of the world’s No. 1 coca-producing valley right under the Peruvian military’s nose, we have a significant development.

For the first time in more than a decade, an officer of Peru’s armed forces has been arrested for drug trafficking.  An army lieutenant, he had worked in the valley for eight years and collected bribes of $10,000 per flight that likely were shared with his superiors, the prosecutor told me. That’s the same sum that an accused narco pilot had told me local military commanders got per plane.

blowing-up-airstriMy months of reporting were now being substantiated by events. Intercepted phone conversations made it clear that Lt. Wilmer Eduardo Delgado Ruiz was the bag man. Or rather his wife was, as the money was transferred into her account.

Former Peruvian army Maj. Evaristo Castillo, who blew the whistle on military drug trafficking in the 1990s, says drug corruption is _ as it was then _ systematic in the military, as top to bottom as the command structure.

One arrest is no guarantee of a housecleaning. Just ask Castillo. None of the generals he publicly denounced for drug trafficking was ever convicted of it, he told me. Castillo’s military career was wrecked because he blew the whistle, was disloyal. He spent seven years in exile. And, as one of his four sons (also Evaristo), told me, their hopes of following their father into the service were also extinguished.

 

 

 

 

 

Peru announces probe after AP drug plane report

MAZAMARI, Peru — Peru’s defense minister has announced an investigation into possible drug-related military corruption following an Associated Press report that Peru’s armed forces were turning a blind eye to daily drug flights to Bolivia.

The official, Jakke Valakivi, said Wednesday evening that the Defense Ministry and the joint armed forces command would jointly conduct the probe.

blowing-up-airstri

Peru’s armed forces have failed to effectively impede the ferrying of more than a ton of cocaine a day to Bolivia from the world’s No. 1 coca-producing valley, traffic that has picked up in recent years, according to prosecutors, drug police, former military officers and current and former U.S. drug agents.

In part because of that nearly unhindered air bridge from the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley, Peru surpassed Colombia in 2012 as the world’s top cocaine exporter.

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