Last month, Dutch authorities raided a lab in a small village where Colombian cartels turned charcoal-camouflaged cocaine briquettes back into drugs. The charcoal that most Americans burn in their barbecues is not the stuff they would normally associate with organized crime, yet evidence is mounting that in recent years charcoal—a key Latin American and African export—is fast becoming a cover to masquerade cocaine.
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior research fellow at the Center for Research on Terror Financing (CENTEF).
