Word: cartelized
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...accounts have been found across Western Europe and as far afield as Hungary and Israel. DEA informants report that Cali is looking for sales representatives to man branch offices in Japan, where the going wholesale price for cocaine is as high as $65,000 per kg. "If the Cali cartel makes an alliance with the yakuza ((Japan's organized-crime network))," warns a Colombian presidential aide, "watch...
These tales filter back to the DEA. Possibly, Don Chepe wants it that way. "He's toying with us," says William Mockler Jr., chief of the New York task force investigating the Cali cartel. He and Kenneth Robinson, a retired New York City policeman who is now a DEA intelligence analyst, have been a step or two behind Santacruz since 1978, when they found out that he was building an air fleet and setting up businesses along the East Coast. Thanks to their efforts, Santacruz was indicted for drug-trafficking conspiracy in 1980, but he fled the country...
Investigators in New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana and Florida have won some battles against the cartel. They have dismantled a succession of distribution rings. Federal narcotics trafficking and conspiracy charges, which form the basis for extradition requests, have been lodged against Cali's reputed financiers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez, their four Orjuela Caballero cousins and dozens of other senior figures. U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh has asked the Colombian government to extradite them. Santacruz's half-brother and confidant, Luis Santacruz Echeverri, has been convicted on conspiracy charges in Miami, and his personal financial adviser, Edgar Alberto Garcia Montilla...
...these setbacks have not impeded the cartel's steady growth. Cali's leaders have carefully compartmentalized their organization, so that individual losses do not threaten to bring down the whole enterprise. The Cali management style is cerebral, calculating and guileful. In the tradition of the great Mediterranean trading dynasties, the major families have a patriarchal, authoritarian structure that demands absolute discipline and loyalty yet encourages creativity...
...Cali imagination shines when it comes to the art of smuggling. Medellin brazenly shipped cocaine across borders in fast boats or light planes with extra fuel bladders. Calenos prefer the slow but safe merchant marine. The cartel has devised endless ways to hide contraband in commercial cargo and launder it through third countries. U.S. Customs can check perhaps 3% of the 9 million shipping containers that enter U.S. ports annually, making the odds very favorable for Cali...