Crackdown on ‘narcograndads’ as Briton, 78, held in Colombia
A 78-YEAR-OLD British “narcograndad” is being held in Colombia for attempting to smuggle cocaine out as the authorities deal with a surge in pensioners being used to traffic drugs.
Vincent Ruocco from Manchester was arrested at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport after the police found nine kilos of cocaine hidden in wooden pedicure files stashed in his luggage.
Colombian officials say the number of elderly people used as “drug mules” to move illegal substances across borders for trafficking gangs nearly doubled in the past year. The rise comes as Colombia struggles with record production of cocaine.
As nearly all elderly “mules” are male, authorities refer to them as “narcograndads”. Over the course of this year, 47 people aged between 50 and 80 were caught, with 14 of those over the age of 65. In 2018, 33 were caught. The numbers are likely to represent a fraction of the total number.
“These people represent a vulnerable section of society,” Colonel Wilson Siza of Colombia’s antinarcotics police told The Sunday Telegraph.
“Drug gangs take advantage by offering them large payments. They also think they are less likely to be searched.”
Earlier this year, British pensioners Roger and Sue Clarke were convicted of smuggling £1million worth of cocaine on a Caribbean cruise. A judge in Lisbon, Portugal, sentenced them to eight years in prison in September.
But in Colombia, one reason gangs use senior citizens to move drugs is that they often get away with non-custodial sentences, according to the police. Pensioners convicted of crime are usually placed under house arrest or temporary curfew. “The risk for them is therefore considered to be less so it’s easier to persuade them to try,” said Col Siza.
Very few drugs mules are repeat offenders, according to the Colombian authorities, but Mr Ruocco, who is in custody awaiting trial in Bogotá, had previously been detained at Heathrow airport after arriving on a flight from Togo with 2.5kg of cocaine in his luggage in 2014.
But the Crown Prosecution Service did not present any evidence against him, and so in April 2015 he was found not guilty.
Some 70 per cent of the cocaine consumed globally comes from Colombia. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates the amount of cocaine produced there rose from 1,058 tons in 2017 to 1,120 in 2018.
The demobilisation of the Farc after the peace deal in 2016 has left a vacuum filled by armed groups competing for control of the cocaine trade.
Most of this cocaine finds its way out through ports, where it is easier for gangs to bribe local officials. Airports are considered riskier because of strict security. Colombia seizes more cocaine than any other country, although the total fell by 4.7 per cent last year.