Cpr - Repatriation detention centers

Islands. Spaces of education and civil disobedience

Cpr - Repatriation detention centers

Islands. Spaces of education and civil disobedience

Drug trafficking, the importance of Guinea-Bissau for the 'Ndrangheta

I n 2021, a representative of the Abbruzzese-Forestefano gang met the son of the former president of the African state. The country has a renewed importance in drug trafficking from Latin America to Europe, thanks also to "figures at the top of the institutions", local investigative sources tell lavialibera

Rosita Rijtano Journalist

Updated on January 31, 2024

BISSAU - After a setback, the international criminal organizations that had made Guinea-Bissau famous for being a hub for international drug trafficking are reorganizing themselves, reshaping their way of acting. A reorganization which, according to local investigative sources from lavialibera, once again, as in the past, sees the "involvement of figures at the top of the institutions".

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While the current president of the country, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, who at the beginning of last December dissolved parliament for the second time since he came to power in 2020, seems to have other priorities.

An 'Ndrangheta member having lunch with the son of the former president of Guinea-Bissau

Also originally from Guinea-Bissau is the diplomat that Claudio Franco Cardamone, considered a point man in Germany for the 'Ndrangheta Abbruzzese-Forestefano della Sibaritide gang, meets in Frankfurt on 27 November 2021. Not just anyone, but Malam Bacai Sanhá junior: the son of the former president of the country Malam Bacai Sanhá who, before moving to Senegal, held important positions in the institutions Guineans.

For the 'Ndrangheta, local roots, global opportunities

That day Sanhá arrives by train from Paris, Cardamone waits for him outside the station and on the car journey that takes them to the business lunch they get along immediately. They talk about diamonds and oil, but for the investigators of the Catanzaro prosecutor's office the highlight of the meeting is another: getting cocaine from South America to Europe via Africa, or Spain, with a stopover in Portugal. “It may be that we will be able to do something before Christmas”, launches Cardamone. “That would be really good,” counters Sanhá.

The two were supposed to meet again on December 27 to define the details of the agreement, but Sanhá was stopped by the German judicial police. It does not go further than documented by the Gentleman 2 operation, conducted in 2023 by the District Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate (DDAA) of Catanzaro and by the Financial Police. Sanhá is not under investigation in Italy but, according to an investigation by the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, he was arrested in Tanzania in 2022 and is today on trial for drug trafficking in the United States.

According to the investigation, Bacai Sanhá junior also boasted to an undercover US agent that he had played a role in what President Embaló defined as "an attempted coup d'état linked to drug control", which in 2022 led to the assassination of several members of the security forces, but the dynamics of which have not yet been clarified.

However, the meeting, which was also attended by another Guinean citizen residing in Luxembourg, remains. And it is significant how West African countries are used as a hub for international drug trafficking also thanks to the relationships that criminal organizations manage to establish with politicians, soldiers and heads of local institutions.

The renewed centrality of West Africa in international drug trafficking

Angela Me, head of the research and analysis branch of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODC), explains to lavialibera that "West Africa began to be a transit point for international drug trafficking in the early 2000s. Then, while not ceasing to exist, the route progressively lost its centrality. This, at least, until recent years, when it returned to having a leading role, as suggested by the record seizures carried out between 2019 and the beginning of 2021".

Since 2020, reports from the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate (DIA) indicate that West Africa, in particular Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau and Ghana, are "an increasingly important logistical hub for drug trafficking".

Guinea-Bissau is especially worth keeping an eye on. Considered the epicenter of trafficking in its infancy, this small state still has great potential for cocaine transit, according to the latest United Nations report on the topic published last March. Drugs that mostly arrive here by sea, then move inland and reach Mali and Mauritania through the neighboring countries of Senegal and Guinea Conakry.

In 2019 there were two large shipments of cocaine seized in Guinea-Bissau, and – in both cases – they had entered the country via the Bijagós, an archipelago of 88 islands. One of them was linked to a Malian who, according to the UN Security Council, used the proceeds of drug trafficking to finance the terrorist group Al-Mourabitoun, affiliated with Al-Qaeda. In 2021, however, two tons of cocaine headed to Guinea-Bissau were discovered by Senegalese authorities.

“Investigations into many cocaine seizures in the Gulf of Guinea indicate that Guinean waters continue to be a main transshipment point for the drug, which moves from large to small boats and then lands on the coast,” Lucia Bird, director of the West Africa Observatory of the non-profit organization Global initiative against transnational organized crime, tells lavialibera, adding that “interests in the cocaine market continue to forge alliances within the political-military elite of the Guinea-Bissau and fueling political instability."

The transit of cocaine in Guinea-Bissau. Source: Global initiative against transnational organized crime

Politicians and narcos: the great alliances behind the transit of cocaine in Guinea-Bissau

Bird, who has conducted much research on the role of West Africa in international drug trafficking, analyzed the evolution of the flow of cocaine in the former Portuguese colony in the report Cocaine politics in West Africa, documenting how its history has been intertwined with the fate of the highest institutional positions.

“The cocaine market can be seen as the glue that holds together a complex constellation of power alliances,” the report reads. Military and political figures make up the elite who protect the flow of drugs through the country, ensuring that the risk of shipments being intercepted by authorities remains acceptable. A protection network which, says Bird, makes Guinea-Bissau "not just a transit point but an important storage and redistribution center in the flow of drug trafficking". While criminal entrepreneurs, often Guineans with dual citizenship in another country, take care of the logistics.

The recent history of Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest countries in the world, is marked by chronic political instability: since it gained independence from Portugal, declared in 1973 and achieved in 1974, there have been 17 confirmed, attempted or successful coups d'état. The ability of drug trafficking to impact the country's political instability was first evident in 1998, during an 11-month civil war. But it reached its previous greatest expansion in 2007, under the presidency of João Bernardo Viera.

These are the boom years in which, according to the story of one of our sources in the country, a boy found bags of cocaine on the beach and, mistaking it for chalk, used it to mark off a football pitch. A phase of tension followed which in 2009 led first to the assassination of the head of the armed forces Batista Tagme Na Waie, and then of President Viera himself.

In 2012, General Antonio Indjai took power thanks to a coup, having retired to private life on his cashew plantation in 2014, after an operation by the US federal anti-drug agency (DEA) which undermined his power. In 2021, the US State Department announced up to a five million dollar reward for information leading to his arrest, describing him as the head of a criminal organization that participated in drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau, and as "one of the most powerful destabilizing figures" in the country, operating across West Africa "to corrupt and destabilize governments and undermine the rule of law by exploiting money made from illicit profits".

Between 2013 and 2019, the system of protection around cocaine trafficking would have changed, and the monopoly of military control weakened in favor of a more complex network uniting state and civilian actors. Until today.

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New presidency, new priorities

According to what was reconstructed from the dossier of the Global initiative against transnational organized crime, in February 2020, when President Umaro Sissoco Embaló came to power, following an electoral victory supported by the army, alongside the new administration "a certain number of figures from the political-military establishment of Guinea-Bissau linked to drug trafficking returned to prominence", including names that are on the sanctions list of the UN, the United States and of the European Union. An investigation supported by the Pulitzer Center highlighted how in a photo taken on February 29, 2020, two days after he was proclaimed president, Embaló appears close to some of these people, including Indjai.

Also significant are a progressive centralization of power in his hands and a greater influence of politics on the judicial apparatus. In lavialibera, investigative sources speak of a complicated context, in which there is a lack of investment in the judicial police, which has few men and few means to police the territory, especially the territorial waters.

Then there is a problem of justice. Our sources confirm that in the country "the corruption of the judicial system is one of the major obstacles to the fight against international drug trafficking". There have been people arrested with large quantities of drugs who, although convicted, were later released or had their sentences reduced. An example is what happened during the seizure of five kilos of cocaine in October 2021, which led to the arrest of six people, including a military officer near Indjai. Of these six people, only two were sentenced to light suspended sentences with charges that were weakened compared to those brought by the judicial police. While the others, including the officer, were acquitted. Not only that. All those convicted in the Navara operation conducted by the judicial police in 2019 were released following a scandal and the suspension of the judge who handed down the sentence by the Superior Council of the Judiciary of Guinea-Bissau.

Certainly, the change at the top of power in 2020, concludes Bird, is characterized by a concrete reduction in attention to the issue of cocaine trafficking.

The port of Bissau, which can be accessed without controls

Drug trafficking, the rise of Brazil and the end of the 'Ndrangheta monopoly

The role of Guinea-Bissau, and more generally of West Africa, in the flow of cocaine that reaches Europe from South America must be seen in a context of major changes in the panorama of international drug trafficking, Angela Me explains to lavialibera. The fragmentation of the criminal network in Colombia and a parallel rise on the scene of the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), a Brazilian criminal group founded 30 years ago by prisoners and which has now become the most powerful in the country (with, according to the Economist, over 40 thousand affiliates), have led to an increase in cocaine shipments departing from Brazil which find the geographically closest landing place in the Gulf of Guinea but "also a similar social-cultural and linguistic context", specifies Me.

The criminal balance has also changed: "The 'Ndrangheta no longer has a monopoly on cocaine trafficking in Europe, where Balkan groups, in particular Albanians, have greater weight."

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"There is no longer a hegemonic group that controls the entire production chain, but many dynamic groups that have growing specialization - continues Me -. Everything is managed as if it were a business: there are those who deal with production, those with transport and those with distribution". A competitive market which, the UN documents, has a triple consequence: the price of cocaine sold in Europe decreases, while the quantity and quality of the product increase.