Drug traffickers infiltrate foreign embassies Tanzania

Adept at taking advantage of every opportunity to grow their dubious business, drug traffickers are now using local staff working in foreign embassies to secure visas easily, The wadjs on Sunday can report.

In a month-long investigation, we have established that drug dealers pay officials in diplomatic missions to help process their visas. Other officials in diplomatic missions help them process their visa applications and give them inside information necessary to ease their way through the system.

Already, a local employee at the Brazilian Embassy in Dar es Salaam (name withheld) is said to have disappeared after investigations on a visa for a detained drug mule zeroed in on him. A source at the embassy confided to our reporter that the absconder had created a file full of fake documents to aid his accomplice.

Brazilian envoy Francisco Luz confirmed the developments in an exclusive interview. They had to tighten visa application procedures and security system at the embassy, he confided, in response to the inside job.

“Because of this, we are introducing tight procedure in scrutinising visa applications,” said Ambassador Luz. “We are denying more visas than ever.”

The embassy has reportedly laid off local staff in the past for the same reason.

The revelation comes at a time police reports indicate that over 90 per cent of cocaine seized in Tanzania’s major airports in the past three years was sourced in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. About Sh6 billion worth of heroin and cocaine has been seized at Tanzania’s major airports in the past two-and-half-years.

The drug haul came from 56 suspects detained at Julius Nyerere International Airport and Kilimanjaro International Airport. The travel documents of most of the suspects confirmed that much of the cocaine is sourced in Sao Paulo.

But Ambassador Luz told The wadjs on Sunday that the fact that the drug mules came from Sao Paulo should not be taken to mean his country was not working at stopping the trend. The trend, he added, can best be explained by the fact that his country is the only one in the region that offers connection flights to Africa.

“People ought to know the cocaine or heroin is not produced in Brazil but sometimes cocaine produced in some Latin American countries gets into Brazil to be transported to Africa,” he said.

In the meantime, police in Tanzania and Brazil are hard at work trying to unmask the faces behind the syndicate.

“We are determined to find out who these guys are and who are behind them and stop this link,” Mr Luz added.

This paper has reliably learnt that the embassy will assign a police officer from Brazil to work at the embassy in Dar in the campaign to keep drug traffickers at bay.

The embassy has also increased the time to process visa applications from a minimum of 48 hours to at least four days to allow time for verification of documents.

At least 20 people who applied for visas to travel to Brazil to watch the World Cup were turned down--reportedly because the purpose of their travel was suspicious and their travel documents were wanting.

Not only the Brazilian embassy

The Brazilian embassy is not the only diplomatic mission that drug dealers could have been manipulating into dishing out visas. Another embassy (name withheld) is investigating how a woman who was recently detained at JNIA got her visa.

Drug traffickers are very innovative, according to the Brazilian ambassador, and are using all means possible to transport their loot.

“A woman may go to Brazil and conceive while there or a Tanzanian man may impregnate a Brazilian woman to qualify for a visa,” says the envoy, “This makes it hard for us to deny them visas.”

He adds: “They always find new ways. These people are well organised and what we are doing is to try to make their life difficult.”

The tricks never end. According to the ambassador, a young Tanzanian who was denied visa surprisingly returned a year later to ask for a visa with a new passport--complete with a new name and details.

Head of the Anti-Narcotics Unit Godfrey Nzowa says he is not surprised by the reports as drug dealers use every opportunity to get into the dangerous business. “They use more tricks than you can imagine,” says Mr Nzowa. “Every person and institution needs to be extra careful because drug dealers can use them without their knowledge.”

He called on diplomatic missions to work closely with the police whenever they had reason to suspect anyone.