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PERU: UNRAVELING THE TALE OF FOOD EXPORTER-TURNED-DRUG LORD(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) LIMA, Aug. 29, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- A Peruvian of Dutch descent, Ment Dijkhuizen Cceres, was a leading exporter of asparagus, artichokes, mangoes and paprika who officially represented his country at food produce fairs in Paris, Madrid and Berlin. But behind the veneer of a successful businessman, prosecutors say, lurked a drug lord. On Nov. 11, Rotterdam antinarcotics police discovered 1.7 tons of cocaine in a cargo of tinned asparagus exported from Peru to the Netherlands by La Casita Corp., one of the most prosperous companies in the emerging agro-export trade. The owner was Ment Dijkhuizen, who was arrested. His brother Jorge Dijkhuizen and his cousins Reynaldo, Jos and Augusto Martnez Cceres were also arrested, as were members of an international organization, headed by a Dutch citizen, Johnny Martin Wilson, who were receiving tons of cocaine from Ment Dijkhuizen's drug ring in Peru. Dijkhuizen has not been convicted, but Peruvian authorities believe they have built a powerful case against him that leaves no doubt about his activities. Dutch police agents traveled to Peru to exchange information with the National Anti-Drug Directorate here, bringing valuable documents found among Ment Dijkhuizen's belongings. Since then he has been dubbed "The Dutchman" by the Peruvian police, because of the difficult pronunciation of his surname. Both Peruvian and Dutch narcotics squads concluded that Ment Dijkhuizen was no novice to the drug trade. "He was not associated with any Mexican or Colombian cartel, but with big U.S. and European traffickers to whom he sold drugs directly. We had never seen such a case before," a high-ranking anti-drug police official told IPS. "This means that Peruvian drug lords handling millions of dollars have begun to emerge, who are in a position to compete with the Mexicans and the Colombians. Obviously, dealing directly instead of through intermediaries, they make larger profits," he added. Among the information seized were hard disks from "The Dutchman's" personal computers, which allowed the Peruvian police to conclude that he had been smuggling drugs for more than two years. Documents and e-mails showed that Dijkhuizen had connections with Jorge Vejarano, an agricultural exporter who also held a post in the city government of Trujillo, the largest city in northern Peru, and with Jorge Espino, another member of the business community. Both men had been arrested by Spanish anti-drug police after 200 kilograms of cocaine were discovered in a Spanish port on Oct. 3, 2003, hidden in asparagus tins exported by Conservas Trujillo, a company in the names of Vejarano and Espino but actually owned by Dijkhuisen. "This means that after Vejarano was captured, 'The Dutchman' continued to export cocaine, which is a measure of his vast capability to get drugs out of the country using his agro-export businesses as a front," the anti-drug police sources said. Peruvian agents later found that Dijkhuizen possessed another dozen or so companies that were apparently exporting foods, but in reality acted as covers for smuggling cocaine. "When we went to the canning factory at La Casita Corporation, where the asparagus tins containing the drug picked up in Rotterdam came from, our experts found traces of pure cocaine. This proved that cocaine was being canned right on the premises in Dijkhuizen's companies," the authorities reported. IPS obtained access to the documents seized by the Rotterdam police, including the diagrams with instructions to the drug traffickers for identifying tins containing cocaine from those containing asparagus. They could be distinguished by their locations in the crates, by the color of the tin or because they bore a distinctive seal. "He was a respectable businessman who was highly thought of," said a director of the Peruvian Exporters' Association (ADEX), who agreed to talk to IPS on condition of anonymity. Dijkhuizen belonged to ADEX as well as the governmental Peruvian Export Promotion Agency (PROMPEX). "He was a well-known exporter. No one would have thought that he was involved in any illegal activity. It's deplorable," the ADEX source said. According to information from the Peruvian Customs authority, La Casita Corp. exported nearly 678 tons of canned preserves in January and February 2004, and some 610 tons in April and May 2005. Another of Dijkhuizen's companies, River Valley Farms, exported 953 tons of tinned food in January 2005 alone. "These figures give us an idea of the amount of drug he could have smuggled along with the asparagus or artichokes. The quantity of cocaine he could have exported from Peru is very large indeed," a source at the Office of the Public Prosecutor, which is in charge of the case, told IPS. "We're dealing with a drug lord working for himself, who was handling vast amounts of money. We've just completed the first stage of the investigation, and we've found only the tip of the iceberg," he said. The latest report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime stated that potential cocaine production in Peru has remained stable over the last five years, with an average production potential of between 141 and 190 tons. This has led to Peru becoming the world's second largest exporter of cocaine, after Colombia. According to the National Anti-Drug Directorate's own reports, it is only able to seize about 20 percent of the total cocaine processed in Peru. And 70 percent of the cocaine that drug traffickers manage to export leaves from coastal ports. "The Dutchman" smuggled the drug out by ship. "There is talk here about Mexican drug cartels operating in Peru, but little or nothing is said of the cartels that Peruvians have begun to organize. "The Dutchman' exported cocaine to the United States and Europe, like the big foreign cartels," the source at the Office of the Public Prosecutor told IPS. In fact, Dijkhuizen may not be the only Peruvian exporting cocaine on an industrial scale. On July 24, anti-drug authorities in Nigeria discovered 16.3 tons of cocaine hidden in bags of white cement, in a container that originated in Peru. Four days later, police in Vancouver, Canada, seized 1.1 tons of cocaine from an organization led by Daniel Fernando Ledesma, a Peruvian. "This drug could be shipped from Peru because cartels with the capability of exporting cocaine directly already exist here," an official at the Office of the Public Prosecutor said. "The Dutchman" reinvested part of his profits in new agro-export companies, and in improving the ones he already owned in order to maintain the appearance of a successful legal business, the investigations revealed. Anti-drug police found that he had set up a network of front men, led by his lawyer, Eduardo Gallardo, who according to police and judicial investigations had organized such a complex and entangled money-laundering system that only part of it has been unravelled. Gallardo had 20 powers of attorney to conduct transactions all over the world in the name of foreign ghost companies registered in the U.S. state of Florida, the Dutch island of Aruba and Panama in Central America. A police report to which IPS had access indicates that Gallardo hired a Spaniard, Jorge Landaeta, to administer Dijkhuizen's money. Landaeta, following "The Dutchman's" instructions, would transfer millions of dollars of drug money between bank accounts. Agents following the trail of these operations discovered a network of "laundering" companies, directed by Dijkhuizen's cousin, William Salazar Cceres, and his sons John, Hebert, Wilfredo and Hernn Salazar Paredes. William and Hernn Salazar are still at large. "In the last few years, they have laundered about $150 million by buying farmland, sophisticated machinery, heavy transport vehicles, real estate, cars and other goods," the source at the Office of the Public Prosecutor said. Dijkhuizen made different attempts to keep the authorities from lifting bank secrecy rules to allow investigations of his accounts. But he only persuaded one judge -- subsequently recused from the case and now under investigation -- to refuse the prosecutor's request to arrest his accomplices and investigate his financial affairs. His main front man, Gallardo, who is at large, has allegedly tried to bribe the authorities. "He is running around all over the place trying to obstruct the investigations," a prosecution source said. "He has a lot of contacts and a great deal of money," he added. Gallardo, in a letter to La Republica, a local paper, dismissed the allegations of money-laundering as totally false. The revelations about "The Dutchman" have changed the perceptions of Peruvian authorities about drug trafficking. Peru has evolved from a cocaine paste producer in the 1980s and a cocaine supplier in the 1990s into an international exporter of cocaine hydrochloride in the first decade of the new millennium, thus joining the major leagues of the global drug trade. Copyright 2006 Global Information Network |