Word: cartelized
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...Tampa, U.S. Attorney Robert Merkle accused Noriega of conspiring to import and distribute more than 1 million lbs. of marijuana into the U.S. In Miami, U.S. Attorney Leon Kellner charged the general with accepting $4.6 million in payoffs for allowing Colombia's powerful drug cartel to ship more than 4,000 lbs. of cocaine through Panama to the U.S. Noriega also allegedly permitted the cartel to set up a cocaine-processing plant in Panama and to temporarily relocate its headquarters there after the murder of Colombia's Justice Minister in 1985. The general, Kellner charged, had "utilized his position...
...more than loyalty to any ideology. While a valued point man for the CIA, he enjoyed close relations with Cuban Leader Fidel Castro. Blandon says he personally witnessed a 1984 meeting in Havana at which Castro mediated a dispute between Noriega and the leaders of a major Colombian drug cartel. According to Blandon, as well as U.S. Customs investigators, Noriega has supplied Cuba with U.S. intelligence and high-technology goods. In Central America, the general has sold weapons both to Nicaragua's anti-Communist contras and to Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador. "He is a businessman," declares Blandon. "Contras, Sandinistas...
...testimony before the subcommittee yesterday afternoon, a Panamanian pilot, his features hidden by a black hood, said Noriega contracted in 1982 with Colombia's Medellin narcotics cartel to protect cocaine shipments flown into Panama en route to the United States. The cartel is said to be responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine imported into the United States...
...used bribery, threats and murder to become a law unto itself. Over the past several years, a Justice Minister, scores of policemen, 21 judges and more than a dozen journalists who refused to be bought off have been murdered. In the case of Ochoa, a leader of the Medellin cartel who is wanted in the U.S., Hoyos was investigating a group of officials, including two judges, who are suspected of accepting bribes to help Ochoa walk out of prison. "Who's in control in Colombia?" asks Ann Wrobleski, head of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters...
Hoyos believed that the Medellin cartel could be broken, but he was realistic about the consequences of trying. A year before Hoyos' murder, a former Justice Minister who had been appointed Ambassador to Hungary was tracked down and seriously wounded in Budapest. Said Hoyos at the time: "No one is safe anywhere against the vengeance of the mafia...