Word: calied
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...smooth chairman of the board, more cerebral, with a fondness for the Colombian poets, a passion for soccer, and friends in high and public places. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials have long felt, however, that Gilberto's intelligence has been overrated. Believed to be the leader of the powerful Cali cocaine cartel, Gilberto, who says he is merely an honest drugstore magnate, has never been able to explain why the Medell?n drug lord Pablo Escobar-now deceased-was always trying to kill him. In any case, "the Chess Player," as Gilberto is known, miscalculated on his final move, failing...
Michael Abbell, a former Justice Department lawyer in charge of prosecuting drug smugglers, was indicted along with 60 others on charges of conspiring to protect members of Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel. Two other former Justice Department lawyers were also named in the indictment. Federal officials say the charges stem from activities the three conducted after they left the department. They charge that the three laundered money, fabricated evidence to helpcartel members facing prosecution, and told the Cali heads the name of an informant, whom the drug smugglers executed...
Carillo acts as a liaison between Mexican drug traffickers and the Cali cartel of Colombia, which in recent years has come to dominate the cocaine trade worldwide. Following a U.S. clampdown in the 1980s on their shipping routes through Panama and the Caribbean, the Cali bosses began contracting their transportation to Mexican contrabandista families, bootleggers who for generations have specialized in running goods -- whiskey, heroin, blue jeans -- into the U.S. In the system that eventually evolved, the Colombians flew planeloads of cocaine from Colombia into Mexico, then paid the Mexicans to move the goods across the border...
Carillo's cool competence appeals to the Cali traffickers. The Cali dons "don't want to deal with some jerk that's running around shooting everybody," says a veteran DEA agent specializing in the cartel. The Colombian bosses allegedly employ Carillo as a kind of nuncio for communicating information to the Mexican federation, keeping peace among rival Mafias along the border and subcontracting Cali business to them. "He has the ability to form alliances," says one U.S. analyst. "He's been the pacifier. If you're going to have power, you have to be able to make alliances...
...shipped via Mexico is typically put back into Colombian hands on the other side of the border, and the Mexicans' effectiveness as a delivery service has won them plenty of business. But the real profits only started rolling in during the past year, when, U.S. agents have discovered, the Cali cartel began paying the Mexican families partly in cocaine and granted them territory in the U.S. where they could distribute and sell drugs themselves. That's a business with much higher profit margins. DEA and FBI agents say they are stymied by the ability of the Mexican operatives...