Santo Domingo.- Dominican Republic’s location at the center of the Caribbean region, as well as having the strongest economy, with at least half a dozen ports, makes it one of the favorite transit countries for cocaine traffickers, the Organized Crime Research Center, Insight Crime reported recently.
For the organization that studies organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, the multiple routes can be used in narcotics trafficking, having access to the US market, as Puerto Rico is less than 200 kilometers away from the Dominican east cost.
“If the traffickers manage to enter cocaine into Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, it is easy to reach the mainland, given that it is within the US customs barriers,” Insight said.
Another reason why the Dominican Republic is one of the favorite transit countries for cocaine traffickers is the growing sophistication of the country’s drug trafficking organizations (OTD), which used to serve mainly as transporters for organizations in Colombia and Mexico.