NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors say they are beginning to unravel the latest innovation in drug smuggling: South American gangs are buying old jets and other planes, filling them with cocaine and flying them across the ocean to Africa.
At least three gangs have struck deals to fly drugs to West Africa and from there to Europe, where demand for cocaine has been rising over the past decade, according to U.S. indictments.
“The sky’s the limit,” one Sierra Leone trafficker boasted to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant, according to court documents.
South American gangs are turning to airplanes because European navies have been intercepting more boat shipments.
In the past year, arrests in Africa have begun shedding light on how the air routes work. The cases are being prosecuted in a New York federal court because some of the cocaine was supposed to have been sent to the United States.
