Colombian drug lords are sending larger narcotics loads through the Caribbean because of rising fees charged by Mexican traffickers, U.S. drug agents said.
Mexican traffickers now demand between 40 percent and 50 percent of the cocaine shipment - up from 20 percent five years ago - in exchange for smuggling the drug into the United States, said Special Agent Bill Mitchell of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Fees charged for smuggling other drugs also have risen, he said.Mitchell spoke at the start of a three-day money laundering conference in Bahamas, which ended Thursday. The event drew narcotics and fraud experts from 14 Caribbean countries.
"We're getting a lot of information that the Colombians are tiring of working with the Mexicans and are now going to shift their efforts into the Caribbean," said Mitchell, who heads the DEA's Miami field office.
DEA officials estimate about 70 percent of the illegal drugs reaching the U.S. mainland pass through Mexico, with the rest going through the Caribbean.
But Mitchell and other Caribbean drug experts now say the share passing through the region could actually be much higher.
They point to the rising cost of employing Mexican smugglers as opposed to Dominicans, who still charge a 20 percent smuggling fee, according to Felix Jimenez, DEA special agent in San Juan.
He attributed the rise to increased presence of DEA and other narcotics agents along the U.S.-Mexican border, which has made trafficking there riskier and more expensive, he said.
"They've had to become more sophisticated and to hire more people," he said.
As a result, "we are seeing a significant increase in the availability of cocaine in the Caribbean," he said, adding that street prices for all illegal drugs have plummeted over the past year.
Heroin, for example, has dropped from $10,000 an ounce in 1993 to $2,900 an ounce now, he said.