Word: botero
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Fernando Botero Zea, who was Samper's right-hand man, 1994 campaign manager and Defense Minister, made his charges from Bogota's Cavalry School barracks, where he has been detained for more than five months. Two hours after the Botero revelation, Samper fired back in a televised address. "The truth," he declared, "is that Botero is lying to save himself." Botero may in fact have decided to talk because he sensed the President was cutting him loose...
Last August, in an apparent effort to shield Samper, Botero resigned as Defense Minister after being implicated in the soliciting of campaign funds from the Cali kingpins; two weeks later, he found himself in detention, under investigation by the Prosecutor General's office. Though Samper repeatedly declared his belief in Botero's innocence, Botero came to suspect that the President was planning to make him the scapegoat in the scandal. He reached the breaking point on Jan. 21, when Samper failed to appear for a scheduled dinner at the barracks, sending in his place Interior Minister Horacio Serpa. Botero became...
Prosecutor General Alfonso Valdivieso Sarmiento, whose relentless pursuit of the drug mob has made him the most popular man in Colombia, told TIME last week that he expected the Botero investigation to conclude within two months. That could well mean more painful news for Samper, who, a Bogota analyst predicted, "will be staggering from revelation to revelation if he doesn't step down." Valdivieso sees one potential benefit in the crisis. "If it is resolved properly," he suggests, "at a time when Colombians are willing to reject the narco society they used to tolerate, we will have a better country...
...Given Botero's success, U.S. officials, who had been pressuring the Samper government to crack down on the drug mafia, greeted the Defense Minister's resignation with mixed emotions. "This guy was pushing very, very hard for the right results," said a ranking U.S. policy hand. "He's been very helpful." Other U.S. agents, however, bolstered Medina's story when they found two Chase Manhattan Bank accounts in New York that appeared to be linked to Samper's inner circle. Medina says that a Chase account was used to launder the Cali funds...
...document that brought Botero down and damaged Samper was the record of a July 28 interrogation of Medina that was stolen or leaked from Valdivieso's office. In the transcript Medina says that on April 29, 1994, Botero gave him the go-ahead to seek funds from the Cali cartel to help pay for Samper's campaign. Medina ultimately received, he said, two payments totaling $5.9 million...