Drug traffickers take advantage of Uruguay 's lax in exports

South American country Uruguay's bid to speed up trade and lower export costs has led to neglect in the customs which has become an advantageous situation for drug traffickers, as per news agency reports. The statement seems evident as recently more than a half-ton of cocaine exported from Uruguay was seized from a plane at a French airport. Later, another shipping container with 4.6 tons of the drug was found in Hamburg, Germany, where authorities estimated its street value at a staggering $1.1 billion. Both the shipments' departure point was Uruguay, South America's smallest Spanish-speaking country, one that seldom makes the headlines for international drug trafficking.

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Uruguay: World Drug Trafficking hub

A German media reported that the country has become a world drug trafficking hub in recent years. Even the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic say that they had noticed a change in cocaine trafficking patterns from Uruguay. The European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction said that they began noticing drug shipments from Uruguay this year, though still in smaller quantities than from other South American nations. The centre's most recent report is from 2017, when 140 tons of cocaine were seized, with Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador the main countries from which the drugs departed, Laurent Laniel, the principal scientific analyst said. An Uruguayan air force corporal was jailed for allegedly taking $30,000 to look the other way while bags passed through a scanner in the case of the flight that landed in France with 600 kilograms of drugs. 

"The bribes detected are just the tip of the iceberg. To reach that level of shamelessness there have to be many others," said Díaz.

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How could traffickers manage the export?

Customs Director of Uruguay resigned after the shipments in May and July set off alarms. Later, senior government officials met with customs agents and exporters to find out what was happening. The reports said that in Uruguay's bid to speed up trade and lower export costs, customs controls have been neglected. The roving eye of the global drug trade -always searching for weak points — found an easy shipment point in this country of just 3.4 million inhabitants, where exports represented 12.6% of its gross domestic product.

"We are a route, as are many others. But it is true that certain controls have been weakened or are not at the level they should be" countries, said Attorney General Jorge Díaz.

On the other hand, Customs officials say Uruguay's controls focus on imports, not exports, which are important to the economy. No one wants to threaten it, said Leonardo Couto, a customs broker who participated in meetings seeking to improve the export control system. Deputy Economy Minister Pablo Ferreri said the Press that the drug seizures in Europe came as a shock, but said that "we are working very hard to quickly improve what must be improved". Until now, no authority has pointed to a specific cartel or group as being behind the Uruguay shipments.

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Uruguay made its first legal marijuana export to Australia

Uruguay carried out its first export of marijuana to Australia, where the drug is legal for medicinal purposes on Tuesday, September 24. As per reports, the country has previously sent samples to Germany, but the ten-kilogram shipment of marijuana to Australia marks the first Uruguayan commercial export since it became legal in 2013. One of the arguments used by Uruguayan legislators to promote the legalization of the plant was its potential to generate economic benefits through international exports. But it took nearly six years to create an infrastructure that allows this to take place. Fotmer Life Sciences, an Uruguayan medical cannabis cultivator founded in 2016, developed marijuana.

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