VICE (2013) s03e04 Episode Script

This week on "Vice," smuggling cocaine through North Africa.
And then, the baby farms of India.
Once you get down to that real low price point, lives may not mean very much.
We were advised to hire an armed escort, because this really is bandit country.
We just saw a baby being born 10 minutes ago.
This turnover is so quick here.
In recent years, Europe's cocaine use has increased exponentially.
Now, it had long been suspected that traffickers were using the failed states of Saharan Africa, but the discovery of a downed 727 found torched in the Sahara Desert reinforced investigators' belief that the region was involved in a new and elaborate drug route.
So we sent Ben Anderson to track this route and find out exactly how the drugs are getting to Europe.
This is Venezuela, which is fast becoming a narco-state.
Venezuela is the most dangerous country in South America.
More than 24,000 people were killed here in 2013 alone, and the country is awash with guns.
A lot of that violence is due to drug trafficking.
It's already the major hub for Colombian cocaine making its way from Colombia through Venezuela to America, the Caribbean, and into Europe.
I've been granted access to one of Venezuela's biggest drug traffickers, who works directly with the guerrilla group FARC.
This terrorist organization is funded by its deep involvement in Colombia's massive cocaine market.
We're getting taken into a barrio, I think, but they're insisting that we're blindfolded all the way there.
Yes.
I filmed with the FARC and with the paramilitaries.
Do you buy directly from Colombia yourself? Yeah.
You can taste that's very strong.
I'm guessing each one of those bricks is about a kilogram, and he's saying there's at least a hundred kilograms there.
That's about seven or eight million dollars worth.
And do you have to hide from the authorities, or do you work with them, or pay them off? Can you be 100 percent confident that you'll not be arrested? The DEA has become convinced that Venezuela is now pivotal in this new trafficking route.
We spoke to one of their top special operations agents, Lou Milione.
You describe Venezuela as a command and control center.
Absolutely, it's this kind of confluence of the Colombians, with the Venezuelans, with the traffickers and transporters.
Not that long ago we had sealed a warrant for the former head of intelligence for the military, Hugo Carvajal, who was arrested in Aruba, so that's kind of just the tip of the iceberg.
Their involvement with the FARC goes back a long time.
There's a plague of large aircrafts and semi-submersibles that are dragged across by other fishing vessels and containers going across.
These traffickers have operated with impunity.
El Coso's men showed us how they move drugs from Venezuela to huge container ships in international waters.
Is it difficult to get the coke from the house you showed us onto a boat like this and then out to international waters? Each time you do a journey, how much coke are you transporting? Each ton of cocaine amounts to over $25 million in street value.
How often are you making a journey like this? How much coke would fit in a bag like this? Do you ever go into international waters? Are you not worried then about the DEA or someone catching you? Traffickers like these and the new networks they are part of have changed the way cocaine moves around the world.
Cocaine arrives at any one of a number of countries along the West African coast.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso all those countries are just getting pounded with cocaine coming from South America.
Africa's a very attractive place because a drug trafficking organization is gonna look for ungoverned spaces, places where there's a weak rule of law, link up with some African corruptors who are well connected, set up houses, set up the infrastructure, so that the loads can keep coming in.
The DEA claims that up to 60 tons of cocaine make their way into West Africa every year.
That's almost half of the UN's most recent estimate of cocaineconsumption in all of Europe.
The huge profits on offer have led to massive corruption and senior government officials have been implicated in the trade as the DEA was to discover in Guinea-Bissau, when they posed as members of FARC looking for a new partner.
We would try to infiltrate in Guinea Bissau to the highest levels of the government and see what their level of complicity was.
And the head of the military, Antonio Indjai, met with our undercovers, and he said, "Here's the international airport.
"You just let us know when it's coming in, "and then we'll arrange for your transportation from there up into Europe.
" Indjai was charged with narco-terrorism, supplying surface-to-air missiles to the FARC.
And Jose Na Tchuto, who was the head of the navy, was charged with trying to move tons of cocaine into Guinea-Bissau.
The influx of this tons and tons of cocaine just completely erodes any semblance of rule of law, because ultimately the money that's coming in, that's corrupting everything, is just gonna ruin everything.
From West African ports, traffickers transport coke north over land.
We followed one of the main routes, which runs from the coast through the Sahara desert, and eventually to Europe.
So we're driving on the main route from Nigeria up to a town called Agadez, which has become a hub for traffickers of people, weapons, and coke.
We were advised to hire these armed escorts because this really is bandit country.
There was almost no sign of any authority out here and traffickers know there is virtually no chance they'll be stopped or arrested.
After driving almost many traffickers arrive in the ancient smuggling town of Agadez in central Niger.
According to the UN, this is a hub for the movement of illicit drugs, migrants, oil, counterfeit medicine, and weapons.
We're on our way to meet a trafficker.
He says he drives cocaine from the border area with Mali to the border area with Algeria and Libya.
And he agreed to be interviewed, but only if we don't reveal his name or show his face.
How many people in Agadez do you think are involved in any form of trafficking? So there was no chance that the government, the army, or the police might catch you? So were your bosses paying off the government or are they part of the government? So this is pretty much the center of Niger, and the beginnings of a desert that's the size of Texas, and this is literally the road to Algeria here.
There's a a 600-mile border with Algeria, and a 200-mile border with Libya, all countries with serious problems, in states of civil war or recovering from civil war, or with the presence of serious jihadist groups.
So it's almost an impossible area to police, and almost impossible borders to control.
This vast area is home to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and affiliated groups like the Movement for Oneness and Jihad.
According to the DEA, these groups, among others, allow coke to pass through their territories as long as they get paid.
They showed us an undercover sting on a Malian drug trafficker named Harouna Touré.
So is there a relationship, a working relationship, between the Latin American drug cartels we know about and Al Qaeda-linked groups in Africa? Absolutely.
Terrorism is a crime.
It's not in some special box.
They need to support their operations, to provide their infrastructure.
The drug trafficking cartels in Venezuela and Colombia have a market in Europe.
The drugs are coming into West Africa.
They need to be transported up through regions controlled by the violent extremist groups and into Europe.
It's a marriage of convenience.
So if I mention a few non-state actors, can you just say whether or not they are involved at some point? Absolutely.
- Hamas.
- Yes.
- Hezbollah.
- Yes.
Boko Haram? We are starting to get information they are, and it's something we are trying to look at.
AQIM? Associates of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, yes.
The Movement for Oneness and Jihad? Yes.
So it's not an exaggeration to say the cocaine trade has funded terrorist attacks.
Absolutely.
Most of the money that was used to fund the Madrid bombing attack came from drug trafficking.
How much danger do you think there is that another attack could be funded in the same way in the future? There's no doubt.
I mean, it doesn't cost a lot to fund a terrorist attack like the Madrid bombing, right? from drug proceeds.
The DEA claims that of the 59 designated terrorist groups, 22 are linked to some aspect of the drug trade.
It claims that trafficking money has helped Islamist groups expand their presence.
Territories that now span thousands of square miles across northern and central Africa.
The problem is so great that former UN secretary general Kofi Annan now works to stem the corruption and violence the drug trade brings.
What is really dangerous about the drug trade, as I see it, is it undermines governance.
They bribe security officers, customs officers, politicians.
The government is weak, so they have a free reign.
Various different claims have been made about the involvement of terrorist groups, Al Qaeda-linked groups.
What do you think the real relationship is between those groups and the drug trade? They are all in this for money and power.
These groups will do anything to make money, to finance the operations, to recruit new people, and this is an easy way to do it.
And when you have drugs floating around, these criminal elements are not going to sit still.
They would want part of the action.
Drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrong-headed governmental policies have destroyed many more.
I think it's obvious that after 40 years or so, the war on drugs it has not worked.
What approach should be taken? There should be decriminalization of drugs and try to make an effort to contain the situation before it becomes too late.
In West Africa, we seen wars fought over minerals.
Do you think there could be similar conflicts over this new drugs trade? When we ignore failed states, they have a habit of coming to bite us in a manner that we don't expect.
We ignored Afghanistan for a while and we ignored Somalia for a long time.
We should try and deal with failing states in West Africa before it becomes too late.
With the growing number of people getting married later in life, same sex couples, and people experiencing infertility issues, there's been a boom in gestational surrogacy.
But with a price tag in some cases of over 100,000 dollars, many prospective parents are forced to look elsewhere around the globe for cheaper options.
Today, the demand is so high that India has recently legalized commercial surrogacy, making it possible to purchase a baby over the Internet.
Now in order to see what this new industry actually looks like, we sent Gianna Toboni to India to check it out.
India's booming medical tourism industry is now worth over $2.
3 billion, almost $500 million of which is earned solely by commercial surrogacy.
To accommodate this rapidly growing business, over 3,000 clinics have been created.
One of those is the Kiran Infertility Centre, where Dr.
Samit Sekhar walked us through the process of implanting an embryo into a surrogate mother.
If the procedure is successful, nine months later, the commissioning parents arrive in India to pick up their child.
To find out more about this process, we went to Anand, which is commonly known as the surrogacy capital of India.
There we met with the director of the most successful surrogacy clinic in the country, Dr.
Nayna Patel.
Her business is growing so fast that Dr.
Patel is in the process of building the largest surrogacy clinic in the world, a 100,000 square foot one-stop shop that will completely eliminate the need for using any traditional hospitals.
I sat down with Dr.
Patel at her home, and she explained what's behind the industry's huge expansion here in India.
Why do intended couples come to you for surrogacy? She offered to show us around her flagship clinic Akanksha, where we got a firsthand look as a surrogate was preparing to give birth.
Moments later, the surrogate was rushed into the delivery room.
Geeta's about to have her C-section right on the other side of this door.
Performing C-sections allows Dr.
Patel to efficiently schedule births back to back.
A picture.
Okay.
That all happened so quick.
Before we knew what was going on, the mother and baby were whisked away by a van waiting outside.
Oh my god.
I can't believe how fast that all just happened.
The baby the woman Sorry, I can't even talk.
It turns out, it was like this the entire day.
We just saw a baby being born 10 minutes ago and already, we're racing back upstairs to see the next baby being born.
It's like this turnover is so quick here.
A lot of chaos in there, but Dr.
Patel, you can tell that she does this multiple times per day, 'cause she's got such ease about her.
She takes the baby out, they cut the umbilical cord, pass it off to the washbasin.
It seemed all very routine for everyone who was in the room.
Seeing these women give birth one after the next, I began to wonder what was drawing them to surrogacy.
So, in total, over the course of 9 months how much money do they make? Perhaps some of the women are happy to be surrogates, but the women we spoke with painted a very different picture.
Do you like being a surrogate? To find out more about the industry from the surrogate side, we contacted Dr.
Ranjana Kumari, the leading expert in the field of Indian women's rights and the author of an extensive report on commercial surrogacy in India.
What did you learn in the studies that you did on commercial surrogacy? One of the ways clinics find potential surrogates is through non-profit organizations like AMMA, whose stated mission is to help women in need find employment.
But when you hear the job options, it becomes clear why so many impoverished women choose surrogacy, like this woman who just arrived at the center looking for help.
But with demand growing so quickly, many clinics work with recruiters who go into poor areas to find surrogates.
When we asked Dr.
Patel about this, she was adamant that she does not target poor women or recruit from the slums.
How do the surrogates find their way to your clinic? And do you have someone who will go and introduce the idea to women in the slums? But when we went to the Mahavir Slum, we met with a recruiter who claimed to work directly with Dr.
Patel to find new surrogates.
Can you tell me what your job is? What was odd was that the price she gave to this potential surrogate was a full $3000 less than Dr.
Patel told us they'd earn, leading us to wonder if the agents are taking large commissions off surrogate fees.
How much money do you make off each surrogate that you find here? Do you give them a contract when they decide to become a surrogate? So if the women can't read, how do they know what they're signing? But walking through the slums, you realize that, even if the payment lowers dramatically, that when faced with the option of destitution or surrogacy, these women have little choice.
So it's easy for the agent to take advantage of the surrogate? In fact, not being paid the original agreed amount is exactly what happened to this former surrogate, who asked that we hide her identity.
To get an even broader understanding of what's fueling this kind of exploitation, we spoke to Dr.
Michele Goodwin, an expert in bioethics and reproductive technology.
It's estimated there are about each year for these services, but they want them at the cheapest price.
This means that you're looking for the people who have the least amount of capacity to negotiate in these contracts and to protect their own interests.
Once you get down to that real low price point, it means that these women are just simply they're simply a number.
The fertility clinics that we'd seen so far are considered to be the best in the country.
But in New Delhi, we were told there were clinics where the prices were much cheaper, but none of them would speak to us on camera.
So to find out how low prices can go, we went undercover posing as clients looking for the cheapest possible surrogate.
We found a place with no visible sign or clinic.
It was just a man in a back alley office.
Have other Americans come here? Whereas Patel goes from around 30K to 60K, at this place, you can pay 10-12K.
That's what happens when surrogacy is commercialized.
Businesses start undercutting one another, and next thing you know, we're bidding for the cheapest baby.
And not only do they have to keep the prices low, but like any other business, they have to maximize their chances of delivering a successful product.
Clinics and doctors are motivated to pump these women with multiple embryos, because they guarantee these intended parents that a child will be born.
The problem is sometimes the procedure is too effective leading to a huge moral issue.
They may possibly have to abort some of the fetuses, they may have to give birth to these multiple fetuses, and some of these fetuses will not go home to the couple in the United States.
To see if these extra babies really did exist, we met with another surrogacy agent who claimed she could get us a baby suspiciously fast.
I know I have family friends who would be interested if you had any Caucasian babies.
When we asked how it was possible that she could get us a baby in only two to three months, the agent confirmed that there were extra newborns, and that we could possibly buy one of them if we didn't want to wait the full nine months.
Then moments later, the agent made another offer that shocked us.
What's that? I missed that, sorry.
At first we didn't understand what was going on, but we soon realized that this woman was actually trying to sell us the baby they brought with them to the restaurant.
This wasn't renting someone's womb.
This was human trafficking.
Right now? It's grim moments like this that many fear will continue to happen with the commodification of human reproduction.
And as long as it remains unregulated, demand continues to grow, and prices continue to drop, the bottom will keep sinking lower and lower.
This is a multi-billion dollar a year industry.
Five, 10 years from now, we will see more assisted reproduction and surrogacy in China, in parts of Mexico, and all across the world.
It's a baby farm.
It's a baby farm.