Source: Reuter

WASHINGTON (Reuter) Russian organized crime groups, flush with dollars,
are forming alliances with Colombian drug traffickers in the Caribbean,
acquiring cocaine for delivery to Europe and providing weapons to Latin
American mafias, the Washington Post reported Monday.

The newspaper, quoting U.S., European and Latin American law enforcement
officials, said the Russian groups were also opening banks and front
companies across the Caribbean, largely using them to launder millions of
dollars from drug sales and other criminal activities.

The officials were quoted as saying that the growing alliances between
Russian and Colombian criminal organizations were the most dangerous trend
in drug smuggling in the Western Hemisphere.

Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's national drug control
policy director, said the Russian groups were among the ``most threatening
criminal organizations based in the United States.''

The newspaper quoted him and other sources as saying that the Russian
groups offered drug cartels access to sophisticated weapons and brought
access to new drug markets in the former Soviet Union at a time when
consumption was falling in the United States.

The sources told the Post recent undercover operations had detected
attempts by Russian groups to sell Colombian drug traffickers a submarine,
helicopters and surfacetoair missiles.