Venezuela Murder Rate 2015 May Be World's Worst, Reports Claim
Before 2016 enters, a non-governmental group has just released Venezuela's murder rate in 2015, showing a steep climb in the number of homicides in the country. Reports claim that Venezuela is one of the places worldwide with the most number of violent attacks.
The Associated Press reports that the Venezuelan Violence Observatory gave its 2015 numbers for Venezuela's homicide rate, which rose up to 90 per 100,000 residents, including a total of 27,875 killings that occurred in this year alone.
Furthermore, the NGO tracked Venezuela's homicide rate and compared it to last year's numbers, which was 82 per 100,000 residents, showing a definite increase. The number was totally different back in 1998, where the publication revealed that the year before the election of the late Hugo Chavez and the start of his Bolivarian revolution had only 19 per 100,000 residents.
The publication further said that Venezuela even surpassed the rate in Honduras and is now in rivalry with El Salvador as the world's deadliest country, although numbers have yet to become available for comparison. Meanwhile, it was not confirmed if the said rate went up continuously or was halted in certain years because there were no available findings in every year.
However, the news outlet revealed that the NGO released its 2013 tracking, which showed that the homicide rate stood at 39 per 100,000 inhabitants at that time.
The news came after reports of criminal groups competing for control of lucrative smuggling routes and other illegal activities surfaced. It also at the same time when Venezuela experienced an economic crisis.
In other news, Ed Krayewski of Hit & Run revealed that the crime in Venezuela also included money laundering by the police, which had the country receive millions from Bal Harbour, Florida.
Furthermore, Venezuela is reportedly the new drug trafficking hub. The Drug Enforcement Administration and federal prosecutors even reveal that some Venezuelan government officials are also involved in the illegal trade.
However, the Miami Herald reported that the police have failed to further investigate to confirm such allegation.
"They had no authority to do what they were doing," Felix Jimenez, former chief inspector of the Drug Enforcement Administration said. "They were just lucky that when they were picking up all this money, nobody got killed."
Furthermore, a police forfeiture account by the Department of Justice Inquiry found "no arrests, no audits, lack of reports, and massive amounts of drug money sent to banks without alerting federal agents. The DOJ concluded that Bal Harbour misspent hundreds of thousands in forfeiture funds on police salaries," the news outlet reports.
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