Peruvian Anti-Drug Police Re-Selling Confiscated Cocaine

Thousands of recordings made during a DEA bugging program reveal that at least 23 police officers from the National Anti-Drug Directive (Dirandro) have for years been hiding cargoes of drugs and stealing drugs from criminal gangs in order to re-sell it. 

The Peruvian news outlet, La Republica presented recorded conversations between police officers who are planning not only to resell drugs, but to make busts without the knowledge of high command.

The police officers implicated are junior anti-drug agents in the region of Madre de Dios.

Other conversations show how other agents are planning to escort drug shipments from Cusco to the border with Brazil and Bolivia.

The news outlet also reports that there has been a suspicious lack of drug seizures in the Madre de Dios region and Puno, where the police implicated are operating.

When this was realized, a judge authorized the phone tapping of at least seven police force members.

The Peruvian police force is widely known to be corrupt, and last year other police officers were caught in a drug running ring to Mexico.

In 2013 the U.N. confirmed Peru as the world's number one cocaine producer.