“It is very important for the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Bolivia to hold these events. We have had incidents involving drug trafficking whose forces were located in other countries or continents,” said the highland state ministry’s top official, Juan Lanchipa.
The agency assured that in order to carry out the investigations with efficient results, “we had to rely on our colleagues from these countries and therefore there is a need to establish these ECIs of joint investigation teams.”
Lanchipa explained that this forum takes place within the framework of the project “Assistance in the constitution, development, conclusion and evaluation of ECIs” led by the Bolivian Ministry of Public Affairs.
In this sense, he thanked the support of the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policy (Fiiapp), whose help he considered essential to obtain as a final product a protocol for the formation of ECIs adapted to the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Highlands.
“A special protocol is required to carry out these joint investigations because cross-border crime requires this from us,” stressed Lanchipa.
He believed that better results could be achieved in the investigation of drug trafficking and other transnational crimes such as human trafficking if the efforts of the State Department and similar structures of other nations were combined.
In addition to Lanchipa, the head of the Fiiapp Bolivia project team, Margarita de la Barga Sánchez, also spoke on the opening day of this meeting.
“We believe that the JITs are an advanced instrument of international legal cooperation, which is absolutely essential for a serious, profound and effective fight against transnational crime,” the expert said.
The academic activity of this forum includes presentations by representatives of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid, the special anti-narcotics agency in Spain; the Guardia Civil and the Human Trafficking Unit of the central operational unit of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Guardia Civil of that country.
The prosecutor of the country’s Special Directorate against Violations of Human Rights, Andrés Rincón, intervenes on behalf of Colombia; and from Argentina, the representative of the Regional and International Cooperation Directorate of the Attorney General’s Office, Victoria Stuart.
ode/jpm