On the Radar: Guatemala’s Justice Gamble, Kinahan’s Fall, and CIA Deaths in Mexico

This week’s On the Radar delves into the controversial departure of Attorney General Consuelo Porras in Guatemala, the arrest of international drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan in Dubai, and the deaths of two CIA agents in Mexico.

Transcript

Welcome back to On the Radar, and this week, we’re asking:

Has Guatemala’s anti-corruption fight just been handed a new window of opportunity?

What does the arrest of Daniel Kinahan in Dubai mean for international drug trafficking networks?

And what’s being missed following the death of two CIA agents in Mexico?

First we go to Guatemala, where the controversial attorney general, Consuelo Porras, has failed in her bid for a third term. Porras has faced sanctions in over 40 countries for her role in protecting corruption networks, and her exit presents an opportunity to reignite the battle against entrenched corruption in Guatemala.

But it will ultimately be Porras’ successor who determines if the deep-rooted criminal networks that have crippled the country’s democracy will be left alone as they were under her watch.

The international drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan, leader of the Kinahan Cartel, has been arrested in Dubai. His organization runs cocaine and heroin trafficking networks, and Kinahan is linked to at least 20 murders across Europe. His arrest came following a violent feud with Ireland’s other main trafficking clan – the Hutches.

This could be the end of the Kinahan criminal group, which has no clear successor to take up the reins from Daniel. As for Dubai, its shine as a safe haven for traffickers could start to fade after this latest major arrest

And finally, the death of two CIA agents in a car crash in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua is causing more tensions between President Claudia Sheinbaum and the Trump administration.

What’s being missed in coverage of the incident, however, is the size and location of the synthetic drug lab that the agents were on their way back from busting, alongside Mexican law enforcement.

Hidden in Chihuahua’s sierra, the site spanned 850 square meters and was divided up into five areas, suggesting that Mexico’s synthetic drug production is continuing to spread north.

That’s it for On the Radar this week. Don’t miss our cocaine round-up next week, where we publish seizure trends of the drug from across the region, and you can sign up for our donor-exclusive event on April 27 via InSightCrime.org.

Bye for now.