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Panama drug bust provides more clues tying South Africa to Mexican and Colombian cartels

Panama drug bust provides more clues tying South Africa to Mexican and Colombian cartels
Police in Panama intercepted more than 500 packages of drugs that was from Mexico and destined for South Africa at the end of Jnaury 2025. Picture Panama Police
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
6 Apr 2025
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A consignment of drugs was intercepted in Panama about two months ago and it provides more clues about the global organised crime cartels that have their sights set on South Africa, and the routes they are using to get cocaine to this country.

Black fabric conceals their faces, and some clutch long firearms as they stand among stacks of boxes.

These are police officers in photographs of a drug bust carried out in Panama on 30 January 2025.

The images provide clues about international drug trafficking – and notorious billion-dollar cartels – that are tied to South Africa.

A press statement from the Panama police, of which the photographs are a part, said 504 packages of suspected drugs concealed in 18 suitcases were found in a shipping container.

Based on the images, the drugs appear to be blocks of compressed cocaine.


Mexico to Mzansi


“The suitcases were coming from Mexico en route to Panama and Spain, with South Africa as their final destination,” the press release said.

This suggests that traffickers in Mexico, or operating via that country while pulling strings from elsewhere, were the source of the drugs.

Daily Maverick has previously reported on how evidence from other cases suggested that two notorious Mexican cartels – Sinaloa and Jalisco – were among the international drug trafficking organisations active in South Africa.

It was also reported that fentanyl, the opioid that sparked an overdose crisis in the US and which Mexican cartels are known to push, had started moving among traffickers in this country.

Read more: Fatal fentanyl hits SA – Mexican cartels among drug trafficking gangs and money launderers ‘active’ in Mzansi

Further backing suspicions of cartels being active in South Africa was a raid carried out in July 2024 at a farm in Limpopo, where a suspected drug laboratory was uncovered.

That crackdown resulted in the arrest of three men from Mexico – Jorge Humberto Gonzales, Alejandro Gutierrez Lopez and Ruben Vidan Rodriguez – along with two local suspects, Simphiwe Melvin Khumalo and Roelof Frederick Botha.

Hawks head Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya previously said the Mexicans may be Sinaloa cartel members.

The drug bust in Panama now provides more clues about trafficking via Mexico and South Africa, as well as elsewhere.

Panama and Colombia


Panama effectively connects North and South America. Mexico is in North America, while Colombia is in South America, and both are home to organised crime cartels.

Like those countries, and also South Africa, Panama has a gang problem of its own linked to the illicit drug trade.

It is known as a key transit point for drugs being trafficked from Colombia to the US.

Read more: ‘Colombian cocaine kidnapping’ — how two bound and cuffed Cape Town men were found killed in Free State

In September 2024, Panama was referenced several times when the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it was sanctioning two businesses based in Mexico and five individuals from Colombia.

Although the business had alleged links to the Sinaloa cartel, the individuals were accused of heading Colombia’s Clan del Golfo (CDG), which the US Embassy in Panama described as “one of the country’s largest drug trafficking organisations”. The CDG was also involved in human trafficking.

Multibillion-dollar Clan del Golfo


A US Drug Enforcement Administration statement from 2023, about the guilty plea of former CDG head Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, better known as Otoniel, referred to the gang as a “Colombian paramilitary and multibillion-dollar drug organisation” with as many as 6,000 members.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaGf-UkLo_k

It added: “The CDG is one of the most violent and most powerful criminal organisations in Colombia, and it is one of the largest distributors of cocaine in the world.

“Clad in military uniforms, CDG members employ military tactics and weapons to reinforce their power and incite wars and violence against rival drug traffickers, paramilitary organisations, and Colombian law enforcement authorities who threaten the CDG’s control.”

Given that the CDG is known to operate via Panama, the drugs intercepted there in January may have links to it, meaning CDG members could be using Panama as a transit point for drugs destined for South Africa.

Double killing and Cape Town


Suspicions of Colombian links to local drug trafficking have cropped up before.

Some stemmed from incidents involving suspected gang boss Peter Jaggers and his associate, William Petersen, both of whom were from Cape Town.

They were reported to police as having been kidnapped in Gauteng in July 2024.

Read more: Dual legacies – Peter Jaggers’ death sparks divided opinions on gangsterism in Cape Town

A few months later, in October, their bound bodies were found in the Klip River in Oranjeville, Free State. They had been murdered.

There had been suspicions that Jaggers and Petersen were linked to a major cocaine consignment that was meant to be collected from Colombian traffickers off Cape Town’s coast. The suspicions continued along the lines that the plan went wrong, which led to their murders.

A Hawks spokesperson was unable to respond to queries about the case this week because Daily Maverick could not provide a specific detail – a case number – to help them obtain information.

It is understood, though, that investigations into what led to the murders of Jaggers and Petersen are continuing, and a breakthrough is yet to be made.

Panama drug Police in Panama intercepted more than 500 packages of drugs that was from Mexico and destined for South Africa at the end of January 2025. (Photo: Panama Police)


Container of cocaine


Meanwhile, there are other drug trafficking ties connecting South Africa to Panama, which in turn link this country to different cartels and gangs.

Daily Maverick previously reported on a global “supercartel” – a merger of various international organised crime groups – that was believed to have its headquarters in Dubai.

Read more: Connecting the global drug trafficking dots – Durban and Dubai linked to cocaine smuggling ‘supercartel’

There appeared to be links to drug trafficking activities in Durban, and to Edin “Tito” Gacanin, who is from Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is accused of being linked to the supercartel.

Individuals from Panama were reportedly also involved in the supercartel, which means it could have provided them with connections to this country.

In a separate case that involves South Africa, Adolfo Eduardo Williams Fuentes was sentenced to 11 years in jail in Panama in May 2024 for drug trafficking that took place in June 2021.

Read more: Breaking (very) Bad – More links between South Africa and global drug trafficking cartels exposed

According to Panama’s Public Ministry, evidence in that case showed that Fuentes tried to smuggle 499 parcels of cocaine out of that country.

He had planned to use a shipping container that entered a port in Cristóbal, a town in Panama.

According to the public ministry, the cocaine was set to stop in Belgium, but it was ultimately “departing for South Africa”. DM


Caryn Dolley has spent years tracing the footprints of drug kingpins from across the world. In her book, Clash of the Cartels, Dolley provides unprecedented insight into how specific drug cartels and syndicates have operated via South Africa, becoming embroiled in deadly violence in the country and bolstering local criminal networks. Available from the Daily Maverick Shop here.
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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