This small, sparsely populated nation has one of the lowest homicide rates in South America. But behind this veneer of tranquility, criminal economic drive large parts of the former Dutch colony, with the involvement of government officials at the highest level.
Geography
Suriname is isolated geographically from the rest of the continent. Jungle covers about 90% of its surface and few roads connect it to French Guiana in the east and Guyana in the west. There is no road to southern neighbor Brazil. Its 1,500-kilometer border is largely uncontrolled.
The country has large oil reserves and gold deposits. With about half the gold sector concerning small-scale mining and little transparency on who owns the gold concessions, corruption and illegality are common.
Its geography also makes the country attractive as a transit point for drugs bound for Europe, directly or via West Africa. Drugs enter via land from Guyana, or via Venezuelan fishing vessels dropping GPS-traceable packages of cocaine in international waters near Suriname’s coast. Drugs can also be flown in from Brazil with small planes that can land on one of the dozens of formal but unmanned airstrips in the jungle.
Cocaine leaves the country from its main port in Paramaribo and the international airport of Zanderij. Drugs are also transported in pleasure yachts and possibly submarines.
History
Suriname became independent in 1975 after almost three centuries of Dutch colonial rule.
Barely five years later, a bloodless coup led by sergeant Desi Bouterse put a military regime in place that ruled until 1987. Structural economic improvement remained absent and the regime quickly lost popular support.
The murders of 15 prominent opponents in December 1982 left the country in shock and politically isolated. In 1986, the massacre of 35 people in Moiwana, a village near Moengo, led to the creation of the “Jungle Commando” guerrilla group. Led by Bouterse’s former bodyguard, Ronnie Brunswijk, the group sought to defend the Maroon population, descendants of Africans who escaped slavery during colonial rule.
In 1987, Suriname held its first free presidential elections after eight years of military dictatorship. The following years were marked by a peace process with the guerrillas.
During the Bouterse dictatorship, the foundations for a narco-state were established, with members of the military regime being involved in multiple drug-related scandals. Pablo Escobar visited Desi Bouterse at his presidential palace in 1983. His image deteriorated further with the 1986 arrest in the United States of Lieutenant Etienne Boerenveen, the regime’s second-in-command, for drug trafficking. In the 1990s, Bouterse and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) exchanged weapons for cocaine through Brazilian drug trafficker Leonardo Dias Mendonça, who acted as the intermediary.
FARC leader Carlos Bolas was captured in Suriname in 2002. Guyanese cocaine lord Roger Khan, who the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) regarded as an ally of Bouterse, was also arrested in Suriname in 2006 and extradited to the United States.
In the 2000s, the country’s economic position improved. Resilience to organized crime increased and international cooperation was strengthened, including through the adaptation of the 2006 Paramaribo declaration by the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (Comisión Interamericana para el Control del Abuso de Drogas – CICAD).
In 2010, Desi Bouterse returned to power, this time as a democratically-elected president. The quantity of drugs seized abroad but that originated in Suriname doubled directly in the following two years and now a significant amount of drugs seized in Europe’s ports originate in the country.
Fifty years after independence, Suriname is economically weak and unlikely to profit from its large oil and gold reserves. Deliberate mismanagement that mostly favored Bouterse’s inner circle hollowed out the state apparatus, with officials’ loyalty overruling their qualifications.
In July 2020, President Chan Santokhi took office and ousted Bouterse and his complicated legacy. To do so, Santokhi had to make a deal with Brunswijk, who currently serves as vice president.
Despite promises to clean up institutionalized corruption in Suriname and the implementation of some measures in this direction, the country faces the same criminal challenges. The country’s judicial and security systems suffer from high levels of corruption and a lack of structural resources.
Criminal Groups
Organized crime groups are mostly involved in the cocaine trade, gold sector, wood and wildlife trafficking, and money laundering.
To handle increasingly large cocaine shipments, an infrastructure is needed to take care of transport, stashing, security and dispatch. Foreign actors – Colombians, Venezuelans and Brazilians – are responsible for the provision of cocaine, as well as for specialist tasks, such as submarine construction. Within Suriname, local networks handle most of the transit process.
Cultural links mean that many Surinamese traffickers partner with Dutch-Surinamese counterparts to export cocaine to the Netherlands. The country has also been used as a hide-out for international criminals on the run, and in December 2018, a surprise raid took place as part of an international operation against the Italian Mafia organization Ndrangheta.
At the top of Suriname’s criminal hierarchy is a network of former military, businessmen and government officials who manage a large part of the cocaine and gold business, as well as laundering illicit profits. Former president Bouterse was largely dependent on their loyalty to stay in power. His exact role is unclear, but he was convicted in absentia for drug trafficking in the Netherlands in 2000. Telephone conversations intercepted by Dutch police in 2012 also established links between Bouterse and drug traffickers Piet Wortel and Franklin Waterval. Furthermore, his son Dino has been serving a 16-year sentence for drug trafficking in the United States since 2015.
Current Vice President Brunswijk was also convicted of drug trafficking in the Netherlands in 1999 and in France in 2000. More recently, leaked emails from the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, obtained by InSight Crime, revealed the DEA’s suspicions about Brunswijk’s involvement in a 400-kilogram cocaine shipment in 2020.
There are no dominant criminal groups controlling the country’s gold mines. Most concessions are owned by Surinamese citizens, but the process of obtaining land permits is opaque and irregular in many cases.
Brazilian miners outnumber Surinamese three to one, paying a small percentage of the gold found to work on a concession. Ninety-eight percent of artisanal gold mining operations use mercury smuggled from Guyana and China, despite its ban in the country.
At times, small armed groups have robbed miners in the interior. Security schemes that involve Brazilians, off-duty government forces, or private security are common. Brunswijk is one of the most powerful men in the Surinamese gold industry and owns a number of mining concessions, although these were reportedly placed in a trust when he took office.
Some criminal networks involved in mining are also involved in illegal logging and wildlife trafficking.
Money laundering networks partly overlap with those involved in smuggling gold and cocaine. Casinos, money exchanges and second-hand car shops are commonly used, as is trade-based money laundering. Some of the most successful businessmen in the country have been prosecuted for money laundering.
Security Forces
Despite the military coup in 1980, Suriname does not have a strong military tradition. Its small army does not have a lot of resources and many soldiers take on second jobs to supplement their wages, such as security guards in mining areas, for which they often pay a percentage to the army commander.
The budget for the police force has decreased steadily under Bouterse and many qualified officers have left for better-paying jobs in the private sector.
During Santokhi’s tenure, the defense budget plummeted by 60% between 2020 and 2022, falling from $62.3 million to $22.7 million. By 2023, 90% of the budget was earmarked for basic personnel costs, leaving very little room for funding operations, materials, or infrastructure.
Judicial System
Suriname’s judicial branch constitutes an independent branch of the government and is partly based on the Dutch judicial system. The highest court is the Court of Justice (Hof van Justitie), whose members also serve in the lower district courts (kantongerechten) for civil cases and criminal cases. Resources and the number of judges and lawyers increased in the past 15 years.
Nevertheless, there are several flaws in the judicial system. Existing legislation is often not implemented. In 2017, the country passed a new anti-corruption law, but efforts to achieve its full implementation continued into 2024.
Payments are sometimes made to obtain favorable outcomes in criminal and civil proceedings. Furthermore, judges sometimes try the different stages of the same cases, including on appeals for rulings they handed down. And even the most complicated cases are assigned to just one judge, rather than to multiple judges. The judicial branch does not have its own budget, for which it depends on the Ministry of Justice. The president can appoint nominated judges, as well as pardon prisoners, legislation Desi Bouterse used several times, including for the early release of his foster son Romano Meriba, who had been convicted of murder and robbery.
Bouterse also used his position to fight a possible conviction. The Bouterse administration changed Suriname’s amnesty legislation in 2012 to help the president avoid prosecution. The justice minister was fired in 2017 and replaced with an ally. The Attorney General at the time was also asked to voluntarily resign. Despite these efforts to undermine the judicial branch, Bouterse was convicted to 20 years in prison. This process demonstrates that the judicial branch, despite its flaws, is able to show resistance.
Prisons
The dynamics of gang control and massive overpopulation common in many other prisons in Latin America are not seen in Suriname, although the country’s prison system does have its problems.
There are 21 detention facilities in Suriname with an occupancy rate of 102%. Police cells, where many have to wait long periods before appearing before a judge, are prone to overcrowding, and facilities remain basic.
In 2019, abuse that led to the death of an inmate at Hazard Prison, Nickerie, led to the suspension of 17 prison guards.