“For the Attorney General’s Office of the State of Bolivia, holding these events is very important. We have had drug trafficking incidents whose operational arms were in other countries or continents,” said the highest authority of the Public Ministry of the highland country, Juan Lanchipa.
The authority assured that, to carry out the investigations, with efficient results, “we have had to resort to our peers from those countries, which is where the need arises to have these Joint Investigation Teams ECIs.”
Lanchipa explained that this forum takes place in the context of the project called Support in the Constitution, Development, Conclusion and Evaluation of ECI’s, led by the Public Ministry of Bolivia.
In this sense, he thanked the support of the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (Fiiapp), whose help he considered essential to obtain as a final product a Protocol for the Formation of ECI’s, adjusted to the criminal procedural regulations of the highland country.
“It is necessary to have a Specialized Protocol to carry out these joint investigations, because transnational crime requires it of us,” Lanchipa insisted.
He considered that, if efforts are combined between the Public Ministry and similar structures from other nations, better results can be achieved in investigations into drug trafficking and other transnational crimes such as human trafficking.
In addition to Lanchipa, the head of the Fiiapp Bolivia Project Team, Margarita de la Barga Sánchez, spoke on the opening day of this meeting.
“We believe that the JITs are an advanced tool of international legal cooperation that is absolutely essential to seriously, deeply and effectively deal with the fight against transnational crime,” said the expert.
The academic activity of this forum includes presentations by representatives of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid, the Special Anti-Drug Office of Spain; of the Civil Guard and the Human Trafficking Section of the Central Operational Unit of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard of that country.
The prosecutor of the Specialized Directorate Against Violations of the Nation’s Human Rights, Andrés Rincón, intervenes on behalf of Colombia; and from Argentina the representative of the Directorate of Regional and International Cooperation of the Attorney General’s Office, Victoria Stuart.
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