Cocaine Confidential (4 page)

Initially, the noisy aircraft arced out over the Panama Canal and then the Pacific, before heading north-east over dense jungle. Before long I caught a glimpse of the sparkling green Caribbean Sea, followed by the archipelago's nine islands, each a vivid patch of white sand and green forest, surrounded by a galaxy of tiny uninhabited islets. Bocas del Toro, a collection of brightly coloured buildings grouped round a busy harbour – some edging out to sea, perched precariously on stilts – hove into view before us.

As the plane swooped low over the jungle during our descent, Steve pointed out areas where he claimed there were the shallow graves of some of the victims of the coke trade, who pushed their luck and paid for it with their lives. Steve's own life story reads like a potted history of the cocaine business over the last forty years, starting in London, then travelling to Spain followed by sojourns into the cocaine heartlands of South America, as well as numerous adventures in places as far afield as Africa and South East Asia.

The waves in Bocas del Toro – which lies close to Panama's
border with Costa Rica – draw an international surfing crowd, and the coral reefs seduce scuba divers, but many of the beaches remain deserted most of the year round, except for palm trees and lush mangroves. In other words, Bocas del Toro is a laid-back, fairly undeveloped Caribbean resort.

Steve and I stepped into the relentless Panamanian sunshine outside Bocas' tiny shack of an airport a couple of minutes after the plane came to a halt. In a far corner of the airfield lay the charred fuselage of a plane that looked uncomfortably similar to the one I'd just arrived on from Panama City. It wasn't a sight to engender confidence, and I was about to receive another shock.

Strolling down the short, muddy track to the main town, Steve revealed to me he'd hidden $100,000 worth of cocaine in his suitcase, which he was bringing back to Bocas ‘for a friend'. I was furious because he'd let me pay for his plane ticket as a ‘thank you' for co-operating with me for this book. That made me legally responsible for his bag of cocaine. He laughed and said, ‘Chill out, my man. We got through without any hassle.' Then he added, with a wink, ‘I made sure of that with a few bob to the right
hombre
.'

As we started walking up Bocas' main street towards my hotel, the early golden sun rose over this quaint, low-key waterside community. The shiny tin rooftops glowed in the gentle morning light as the town struggled to awaken. Many people in these parts go to bed late and rise just before lunchtime.

Steve nodded at many of the locals as we continued
wandering down Main Street. But I noticed that a lot of them squinted back closely at us, giving the impression Steve was perhaps not the most popular person in Bocas.

Within minutes of checking into my hotel and taking a quick, refreshing shower, I was back with Steve as he drove through the town and headed out into the jungle to the place where cocaine begins its tortuous journey into ostensibly law-abiding societies. Steve spoke perfect Spanish with a carefully cultivated Panamanian accent and used it to ensure we got through a police roadblock on the edge of Bocas with ease.

We eventually head off-road between a cluster of palm trees and down a muddy track leading deep into the jungle towards what Steve promises will be an illegal cocaine factory, where poorly paid country peasants begin the process of turning dried coca leaves into the most potent recreational drug known to mankind.

Coca plantations are a rarity in these parts. In fact, most hardened drug criminals reckoned – until recently – that coca simply couldn't be grown anywhere in Central America. But, as Steve explains, ‘That's utter bollocks. Sure, it's a cottage industry up here compared with the South Americans, but that's the way people like it in these parts. No one bothers these people, as long as they keep it small and discreet.'

Central America has long been a key link in the cocaine trafficking chain, with vast quantity of US-bound cocaine passing through the region. As Steve explains, ‘The locals watched all that coke travelling through their country and
started wanting a piece of the action all for themselves. In any case, producing coke here makes it cheaper when it gets to the US and Europe because it doesn't have to travel so far.'

It's long been rumoured that FARC – the notorious Marxist guerrilla group from neighbouring Colombia – was financing the development of such plantations as a useful way to raise funds. But Steve dismisses that. ‘They wouldn't dare. FARC has no influence round here. No, these plantations are private operations, which are kept strictly beneath the radar.'

However, despite Steve's denials, it's a matter of record that FARC's self-styled 57th Front controls much of the border region between Colombia and Panama. This dense jungle region is known as the Darien Gap. The 57th Front has long been heavily involved in international cocaine trafficking and has close links with the
Urabeños
criminal group (which has also expanded its presence in Panama), runs cocaine to Mexican cartels and has been known to use Panama City to finalise vast cocaine deals.

Steve reckons all the rumours about FARC are ‘irritating to say the least'. He explains: ‘The last thing we need up here is counter-terrorism troops hacking their way through the jungle in pursuit of FARC. The great thing about this area is that it is virtually untouched. We want to keep it that way.'

Further south, in the remote jungle region of Chucurti, near the Caribbean coast and border between Panama and Colombia, other bigger plantations have been uncovered by law enforcement authorities in recent years. Steve reckons such raids were made with the tacit agreement of local coke
barons, who'd decided to ‘give up' a couple of plantations in the area on the basis that the authorities would then not bother looking further north for the bigger operations.

‘There's a lot of give and take in this country,' Steve says. ‘The army and police need to convince the Americans they're taking the war against drugs seriously. It's all good public relations and it ensures the coke factories round here are left in peace.
Comprendo?
'

Down in Churcuti, officials destroyed 4,495 coca plants in an area of approximately two hectares, in a highly publicised operation blazed across local TV news bulletins to show how hard the Panamanians are working in their fight against the evils of cocaine.

But here, according to Steve, in the dense, moist jungle a few miles inland from Bocas del Toro, is a coca-processing and cocaine-production laboratory, with the capacity to produce 30 kilograms of cocaine per month.

Steve says that a cartel of coke barons based in Panama City and the southern Caribbean port city of Colón finance much of the coca production in these parts. The expansive and inhospitable nature of the terrain makes it virtually impossible for Panamanian security forces to maintain any consistent presence. In other words, it's a virtually lawless area.

‘Many of the cops have relatives who work in the coca business,' says Steve. ‘They've seen how the coca plants have helped improved the lives of so many locals round these parts. The cops I meet in Bocas just shrug their shoulders
and grin when you mention the coca fields out here in the jungle.'

He adds: ‘The irony of all this, is that if the Americans hadn't been so good at forcing the Colombians to eradicate the coca fields then this new strain would never have been produced in the first place. Now it's threatening to spread the production of cocaine across the world.'

Steve says he spends much of his time in Panama's second city, Colón, where he admits having ‘two local partners' in his current coke business. ‘They have to be locals obviously because nothing would get done without them and they know all the right palms to grease. It's a tidy little business.'

Colón port area has long been rumoured to be a major hub for the narcotic as it travels up from South America towards the US. But Steve reckons Colón's ‘role' is the perfect camouflage for the home-grown cocaine industry, which is rife in nearby jungle areas.

Busts like the one in May 2013, when the Panamanian Coast Guard seized 2.5 tons of cocaine off the coast near Colón, all help take attention away from domestic cocaine production. That shipment of cocaine was impounded after coast guards intercepted a speedboat being driven by an armed Honduran man, who was immediately arrested. In the first six months of 2013, Panama's security forces seized more than 8 tons of South American cocaine but as Steve explains, ‘That's just a drop in the ocean compared to what gets through. But the authorities are only interested in these
big transit shipments, which is perfect because it allows people like to me to continue their “business” unhindered.'

Steve and I started hiking along a vague jungle pathway and were soon enveloped in the thick forest. Our progress was regularly obstructed by fallen trees that loomed out of the ankle-deep water which covered the jungle floor and forced us into tricky and sometimes risky diversions around their vast and decaying bulk. Matters didn't improve when the heavens opened and we were caught in torrential rain.

Eventually, after more than an hour, we came into a clearing where I recognised the unmistakable shape of coca leaves growing on small coca plants three to four foot high. There were masses of them. Steve explains how he paid a Colombian associate to smuggle some of the original seeds and plants up to him via the local port of Colón. ‘The cartels are trying to stop others from getting their hands on these new type of plants because they know that they will lose control of the market if grows [plantations] are set up beyond their reach.'

Steve recalls how one Colombian cartel sent three of its ‘representatives' to Bocas del Toro to try and find out where local grows were located. ‘Someone in the town informed the Colombians and so they came here looking for the grows. We all knew these characters were in town and why. Then two local farmers lured them into the jungle promising to show them the grows and the Colombians were ambushed. Two of them were killed and one was allowed to go back to
Colombia to give the cartel a message not to come back here ever again.

‘That was a year ago and the Colombians have so far kept away from here but I reckon they're monitoring the situation and if they feel that production of cocaine here is getting too big, they'll probably come back here and a war will break out. That's why everyone growing coca round here likes to keep it small. The factories are never run for more than a few weeks then they are abandoned and set up elsewhere. That helps put the police off their scent but it also ensures the Colombians cannot be bothered to come up here, either.'

Steve's deepest fear is that his territory will be invaded by the Colombian cartels, who in recent years have begun to disperse into smaller groups. ‘It's better when the cartels stay big. Once they split off from each other there is a bigger chance they will come back here because these smaller groups want to take over the smaller grows and factories.'

But, as Steve explains, there is another motivation for the Colombians. ‘The eradication programme in their country is the most effective in South America. Now they've moved a lot of the production to Peru and they're keen to develop new grows and factories elsewhere. That means the sort of set-ups we have here in Panama are ripe for them to take over.'

Only recently, says Steve, there was another ‘incident' when six men in balaclavas and armed with Uzi machine guns turned up at a cocaine factory in the jungle not far from the very spot where we were now standing. ‘We don't
know who they were but they rounded up all the workers and then poured petrol over all of them and set them alight. Three of the workers died and all the locals suddenly stopped helping with the coca harvests and working in the cocaine factories overnight. They were terrified.'

Steve believes the men in the balaclavas were sent by coke traffickers from Panama City. ‘They wanted us to believe they were from Colombia but I heard later that they were off-duty cops hired by a gangster in Panama City, who's planning to try and take over some of these grows in the near future. He's just waiting for the right moment to swoop down here.'

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of all this, is how harmless the coca leaves actually look before they're harvested. ‘That's the beauty of it,' says Steve, lovingly stroking a leaf on a coca plant. ‘This little green fella is helping make a lot of people rich and it's even pulling the poor out of poverty.'

As I watch sackloads of coca leaves being deposited into a massive wooden makeshift bath deep in the Panamanian jungle, I noticed that some of the ‘workers' include children no more than ten years old. ‘I told you it was a mom and pop industry,' says Steve. ‘These kids are here helping their parents. They are in this together.'

Steve then introduces me to Hector and his wife Maria. ‘Hector here was penniless until he was persuaded to grow the coca,' says Steve. Hector smiles as Steve continues: ‘D'you know, they couldn't even afford to eat meat or fish more than once a week until the coca plants arrived here? Now
their kids have proper clothes, they can afford to send them to a local school and even buy them books and other stuff for school.'

That, says Steve, is the dilemma when it comes to cocaine. ‘It might ruin people's lives when they get hooked on it but people like Hector have had their lives transformed by coca. This is all about poverty, son,' says Steve. ‘Once you eradicate that then coke and everything else will die but for the moment it's a brilliant product that helps feed tens of millions of the poor and needy in this continent.'

As I watch Hector and his wife and kids happily emptying sack after sack of coca leaves into the makeshift bath in the cocaine factory, I realise that perhaps Steve has a point.