MARCO VERNASCHI
Marco Vernaschi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1973, and he's currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He's currently working on a large, long-term project about the phenomenon of child witches, child sacrifice and organ trafficking in Africa, and the business behind this fraudulent phenomenon. Marco also documented the major illegal activities behind narco-terrorism with his project "West Africa's New Achilles' Heel", on cocaine trafficking, in Guinea Bissau.
His work with the Pulitzer Center documented how criminal networks led by Hezbollah and Al Qaeda control drug trafficking in Africa.
In Bolivia, he documented the early stages of President Evo Morales’ new policy on coca crops, showing how the indigenous people living in the region of Chapare are forced by the circumstances - and by increasing demand of cocaine in Europe and the United States - to deal with drug trafficking, under constant blackmail and threat by the counter-narcotics police. The resulting story, “Bolivia: Broken Promises”, documented the involvement of children in cocaine smuggling, was defined as unprecedented by the New York Times.
