With the presence of the Minister of the Interior of Uruguay, Luis Alberto Heber, Cr. Jaime Borgiani, National Director of Customs, and his counterpart from the National Customs Directorate of Paraguay, Julio Fernández Frutos, the Cooperation Agreement between customs was signed this Thursday (20.07.2023).
The agreement - signed in Montevideo - aims to "strengthen the Security controls and sharing the use of images from cargo scanners of the Paraguayan government, which arrive on barges and are transferred at the Uruguayan terminal to river vessels and crossings that travel to Europe as their final destination," according to the statement from Uruguayan Customs.
"The scanners, which will be in place by the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024, have the capacity to scan up to 75% of all container movements in the Port of Montevideo," Borgiani said.
According to the head of the Uruguayan Customs, having advance information on cargo allows for more appropriate control decisions to be made. “It is not that we are duplicating controls but rather that we are complementing each other,” he clarified.
In response to this, Julio Fernández said: “Organized crime has years of experience and almost unlimited resources to introduce drugs into our countries and through our countries. We have to unite to generate information and intelligence work to counter an organization that is very powerful.”
The Minister of the Interior of Uruguay said that the agreement is a “great step forward so that our ports can be clean ports, ports that are not questioned internationally.”
In this regard, he referred to the shipment of cocaine that appeared in Hamburg - which passed through both countries - "as a result of human error," which is why the operation "is being investigated by the Paraguayan justice system," he added.
Finally, Heber expressed his gratitude to the Paraguayan customs and its government for this effort.
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