A joint investigation by the ABC and the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo has found that two police departments on the front line of Colombia's fight against drug cartels say they have no evidence of an agreement with the Australian Federal Police for its newly announced anti-drugs taskforce.
In May, AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett announced the AFP and New Zealand Police would fund an international joint investigations team (IJIT) based in the capital Bogotá “to gather evidence about illicit drug shipments”. The team would include AFP officers working with Colombian, US, INTERPOL and Mexican authorities to curb the flow of drugs through the Pacific to Australia, the commissioner said.
In a response to a freedom of information request filed by El Tiempo and shared with the ABC, the anti-narcotics department of Colombia's National Police (PNC) said it had no recorded data showing subscribed “protocols, agreements, or procedures” relating to the IJIT. The department said drug-related intelligence had not been shared with the AFP and no “operational activities” such as illicit substance seizures or arrests had been made in cooperation with Australian police as part of the team.
It said there was currently only a “letter of intent” outlining a “framework for cooperation and exchange of information”, which the ABC understands was signed jointly by PNC Major General Jesús Alejandro Barrera Peña and the AFP in August. “The instrument does not identify the so-called 'IJIT', nor does it establish specific functions, responsibilities or procedures for this department in relation to said mechanism,” the department said. The letter made no connection between the IJIT and joint drug seizures, destruction of narcotics production infrastructure, disruption of criminal groups or identification of international trafficking routes.
The ABC understands the IJIT agreement was made with, and is expected to be overseen by, the PNC's Office of International Relations and Cooperation (ORECI), which coordinates Colombia's international policing efforts, rather than the anti-narcotics department.
An AFP spokesperson told the ABC the IJIT was not yet operational, but an “annex” agreement was made with the PNC in August, in addition to the letter of intent, that would allow the taskforce to “focus on transnational organised crime networks”. The AFP did not specify when the IJIT would become operational.
In a separate response shared with the ABC, the PNC's criminal investigations department said it had no data able to determine whether the AFP was involved, supported, funded or shared intelligence in 174 drug trafficking investigations conducted between January 1, 2025 and October 6 this year. It also said it had no knowledge of Colombian anti-narcotics intelligence being used to identify, locate, track, monitor or intercept suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Pacific Ocean or Caribbean Sea as part of the IJIT.
The findings follow questions ABC put to the AFP in June about the IJIT's allocated budget, operational commitments and how its success would be measured. The AFP said it held 60 documents answering the questions but declined to release them, citing national security and international relations concerns, saying at the time that the IJIT was “still in the negotiation phase” and that publication could harm relations between Australia and Colombia.
In this year's federal budget, more than $1.16 million was allocated to the AFP for “ordinary annual services” in policing assistance efforts abroad and on Australian external territories in 2026-27, expected to rise to $1.4 million next year before dropping in the following two years. The budget does not detail how much is set aside specifically for the IJIT.
Commissioner Barrett said 17 tonnes of illicit drugs, mostly cocaine, had been seized by “local and international” police since January this year and stopped from reaching Australia through the Pacific. The ABC understands that, to July, most of the offshore seizures were made in French Polynesia, AFP officers were not physically involved in any interceptions and none were in Australian territorial waters.
The PNC this month announced an Australian-Iranian national, Arash Ebrahimi Far, was detained in Colombia as a subject of an INTERPOL Red Notice for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering. The case is not believed to be related to the IJIT.