Costa Rica has traditionally been perceived as a bastion of security in crime-ravaged Central America. In recent years, however, the country has experienced record levels of violence, which authorities have blamed on its growing role as a drug transshipment point.
Recent interceptions linked to the illicit smuggling of migrants at Nicaragua’s border with Costa Rica have illustrated the extent to which clandestine groups and individuals dedicated to the trade continue…
A string of recent arrests connecting judicial officials to drug trafficking organizations in Costa Rica have raised concerns that institutional corruption facilitating the trade is becoming more commonplace, as a…
A rush of drug plane traffic from South America, coupled with traffickers smuggling large cocaine shipments after coronavirus border restrictions eased, led to a surge in narcotics transiting Central America…
Costa Rica Profile
Costa Rica has traditionally been perceived as a bastion of security in crime-ravaged Central America. In recent years, however, the country has experienced record levels of violence, which authorities have blamed on its growing role as a drug transshipment point. Local crime groups are growing evermore sophisticated and resorting to lethal violence to secure control. They now pose a major security threat for authorities as they become increasingly involved with transnational criminal organizations and expand their operations in Costa Rica, which may cause corruption and instability to also deepen.
A sizeable seizure of adulterated rum shipped to Honduras from Europe reveals the extent to which black markets for alcohol in Latin America have expanded in response to limits on…
An experiment to track poached turtle eggs through the use of synthetic eggs equipped with GPS trackers in Costa Rica has offered a seductive new approach to fighting wildlife trafficking,…
The photos in the Costa Rican press showed Salvatore Ponzo, the Italian fruit exporter, with a neatly trimmed beard and polite smile, wearing polo shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with…
A new law in Costa Rica, that looks to destroy illegal landingstrips, could provide an opportunity to control flights and close the country’s airways for drug traffickers. Nevertheless, reducing the…
By providing satellite data on its fleets, Costa Rica is the latest country in Latin America to take on illegal fishing, which costs billions of dollars and taxes already over-exploited…
Raids across Costa Rica have exposed a web of front companies filtering illegally mined gold to the United States, in the kind of multimillion-dollar laundering scheme not typically associated with…
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