This week, InSight Crime looks at the mystery shrouding the assassination of one of Colombia's foremost drug traffickers and money launderers, Luis Agustín Caicedo Velandia, alias “Don Lucho.” We also report on how traffickers in Mexico are flooding the United States with the synthetic opioid fentanyl, the main drug propelling overdose deaths there. Find the article on our new InDepth page, which focuses on the complex and evolving criminal dynamics at the US-Mexico border.
Meanwhile, up and down Mexico’s Yucután Peninsula, illegal fishing is out of control; authorities are seizing massive amounts of illegal marijuana along the Paraguay-Brazil border; security forces in Bolivia are bedeviled by chuteros, or vehicle smugglers; and in Mexico, forged vaccine cards appear in no time.
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The United States saw a record toll in drug overdose deaths last year, driven in part by two powerful synthetic drugs mass-produced in Mexico and then smuggled over the border.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 93,331 drug overdose deaths in 2020, according to preliminary data released by the public health agency. The devastating tally marked a nearly 30 percent increase from the 72,151 deaths recorded in 2019.
Read the article >
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One of Colombia's foremost drug traffickers and money launderers has been assassinated in Bogotá, leaving important unanswered questions...
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Illegal fishing is out of control in the Mexican state of Yucatán, according to local fishermen and media, as illegal techniques, competition...
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Profiles of some of the notable criminal personalities and groups that have marked this week.
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For some two decades, Luis Agustin Caicedo Velandia, alias “Don Lucho,” is alleged to have played a significant role in...
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Álex Nain Saab Morán is a Colombian businessman known for making shady million-dollar deals with the Venezuelan...
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"The journalism non-profit InSight Crime has reported that Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez agreed on a truce with the Cota 905 gang when she visited in 2017."
Read our profile of El Koki >
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Unraveling the Web of Elites Connected to Organized Crime
On July 16, InSight Crime published Elites and Organized Crime in Nicaragua, a deep dive into the relationships between criminal actors and elites in that Central American nation. This is the fourth and final case study for the Elites and Organized Crime series, which was sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of the Canadian government. Other case studies explored criminal-elite relationships in Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia.
The series had a huge impact. Throughout the region, the investigations became touchstones for other investigators, journalists and policymakers seeking to make sense of these connections. Internally, the series altered our optic: We increasingly view crime from the top down, rather just from the bottom up. To be sure, some of the most entrenched networks not only work with elites, they are the elites. What’s more, elite crime makes all the crime-fighting institutions weaker through corruption, malfeasance and systematic depravity of resources.
See our latest coverage of elites and organized crime >
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