BRIDGETOWN (Reuters) ? The United States and its Caribbean allies will seek to be more aggressive in seizing assets from suspected drug-traffickers and money-launderers to counter trans-national criminal organizations, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday.
Holder made the comment during a tour through the Caribbean aimed at strengthening regional cooperation against drug cartels and other crime gangs which use the multi-island region to smuggle narcotics, arms and migrants and stash away funds.
"One of the things that we have to do is to hold people accountable, put them in jail if that is necessary ... but also come up with ways in which we get at the assets that these organizations, these individuals accumulate," he said after talks in Barbados with his eastern Caribbean counterparts.
Holder, who visited Dominican Republic earlier this week and will attend a meeting of security ministers from the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday, said the activities of Latin American drug cartels had become a "hemispherical problem" needing a coordinated response.
"We talked about ways in which we can ... seize assets without first finding somebody guilty ... There are ways in which we can do that consistent with the rule of law, with our values. This is an area I think we all agreed we need to be extremely aggressive," he added, without giving specifics.
"We share national security interests," Holder added.
He made the trip at a time when counter-narcotics experts are expressing concerns the major drug cartels could seek to reactivate Caribbean transshipment routes used in the 1970s and 1980s, as law enforcement pressure increases in Mexico and Central America.
Holder said he and his Caribbean colleagues had also discussed an increase in gun violence which has prompted some regional governments to implement crackdowns this year.
Bahamas last month introduced tougher penalties against gun and drug crimes.
Oil and gas producer Trinidad and Tobago also took emergency anti-crime measures in August.
In the Dominican Republic on Monday, Holder announced an agreement to share about $7.5 million in forfeited assets seized from a conspiracy that defrauded the U.S. Medicare program. The United States expected to recover an additional $30 million as part of the agreement.
(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Eric Walsh)
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