Spain and Portugal are still Europe’s main door for cocaine

Spain and Portugal are still Europe’s main door for cocaine, while Latin America continues to be one of its major sources, reveals the EU’s annual report on organized crime for 2011 disclosed today.

“A remarkable increase in cocaine traffic has been registered in the last year through Mexico towards Spain and Portugal," says the study, which stresses the dominant role by Mexican cartels within the drug market in all of the Americas.

It also notes the increasing participation in cocaine trafficking by criminals from the Dominican Republic. “The role of Dominican intermediaries would be leading to an increase in the violence between drug mafias which try to illicitly deal cocaine in Europe.”

The report notes that those groups are well entrenched in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in the Canary Islands.

It said in global terms, the Colombia-Galicia route continues as the most traveled by the drug mafias that want to take drugs from Latin America to Europe. “The Colombian criminal groups continue representing a key role in the cocaine supply for the European dealers," the text says, and also cites Italy’s Calabria Mafia (Ndrangheta).

Europol adds that the profits from drugs to the EU serve to finance activities by Colombia’s FARC guerillas.