Crime Archive

In early July, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, and Colombia’s Ministry for Mines and Energy reported that 66 percent of alluvial gold exploitation in the country is considered unregulated. Illegal mining in Colombia is nothing new, but the latest report indicated that the amount of affected land—84,000 hectares, or more than 200,00 acres—is up 6 percent since the UNODC’s first study on the subject in 2014. The list of violent competitors trying to access these gold riches offers a snapshot of Colombia’s various social fault lines and conflicts. It includes the National Liberation Army, or […]

With barely 10 weeks left until Brazil’s general elections, voters in Latin America’s largest country are seething with anger, frustration and disappointment. Many, perhaps most, have lost faith in democracy, in politicians, and in traditional governing parties. Prominent figures are warning of revolution; talk of a military coup is even in the air. Uncertainty leads the polls. Brazil is caught in what may just be the world’s biggest ever corruption scandal, while the economy is struggling to pull out of a deep recession and its most popular politician, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is in prison. In the […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. In the first two months of an anti-drug campaign launched in May, Bangladeshi police arrested 16,000 accused dealers, leading to cases that resulted in 4,000 convictions, according to the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The campaign had also resulted in 138 deaths as of early July, and the death toll has grown since then, alarming human rights activists and spurring comparisons to the brutal anti-drug crackdown in the Philippines. In an email interview, Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of political […]

As the dust settles on Mexico’s July 1 presidential election results, numerous pressing questions have emerged about how President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, will redefine security policy and the future of United States-Mexico security cooperation. These questions were central to the first high-level meeting between Lopez Obrador and a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner last week. Lopez Obrador takes office against the backdrop of Mexico’s deeply troubled security landscape. While he identified the fight against corruption as crucial to his victory, growing dissatisfaction over public security […]

Last week, Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, split, with several parliamentarians and former allies of President Muhammadu Buhari breaking away to form the Reformed-All Progressives Congress, or R-APC. “The APC has run a rudderless, inept and incompetent government that has failed to deliver good governance to the Nigerian people,” the national chairman of the new rival faction, Buba Galadima, a former Buhari confidant, declared. In a sense, the schism merely formalized tensions within the APC that go back years. On one level, it reflects some northern Nigerian politicians’ impatience with waiting their turn for the presidency and with […]

Former President Mauricio Funes is the latest leader to be implicated in corruption scandals that are consuming El Salvador. In June, 32 arrest warrants were issued for Funes, who was in office from 2009 to 2014, along with his first two wives, his two sons, his current partner, his secretary and other members of his inner circle, including businessman Miguel Melendez Avelar, known to Salvadorans as “Mecafe.” Most of them have been accused of corruption, money laundering and embezzlement of some $351 million. Two others have been accused of obstruction of justice. The warrants follow years of investigations into Funes’ […]

On Friday, Luiz Antonio Guimaraes, a Brazilian prosecutor who was Sao Paolo’s attorney general from 1996 to 2004, was sworn in as the head of the Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras, known as MACCIH. Guimaraes’ predecessor, the Peruvian Juan Jimenez, resigned in February, citing obstruction by Honduran officials and a lack of support by the Organization of American States, which sponsors the mission. The swearing-in came days after Honduras’ legislature re-elected Attorney General Oscar Chinchilla to continue in that key post, and amid a massive corruption scandal known as the Pandora Case that has implicated hundreds of current […]

The result was almost inevitable, yet Mexico still awoke with a sense of uncertainty Monday as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist and long-time critic of the country’s political establishment, finally captured the presidency in a landslide victory. AMLO, as he is better known in Mexico, fulfilled poll predictions by sweeping aside his rivals, Jose Antonio Meade of the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and Ricardo Anaya of the Citizens Front alliance, winning 53 percent of the vote. His Together We’ll Make History coalition captured majorities in both houses of Congress. His victory had appeared a mere formality […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.It’s been a rough few weeks for the G5 Sahel Joint Force, a counterterrorism initiative involving five West African countries that launched its first deployments last November. A series of recent setbacks have exposed indiscipline within the force’s ranks, the severity of the security challenges it faces and a lack of political will to ensure it succeeds. First, the U.N. mission in Mali, where the G5 Sahel is headquartered, reported last week that Malian members of the force “summarily and/or […]