Word: cartels
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Noriega's arrest did disrupt the Panamanian operations of Colombia's Medellin cartel, which allegedly paid the general millions of dollars for passage through the isthmus. But the unexpected result, U.S. experts say, is that the rival Cali cartel established a base in Panama and has since inundated the country -- along with Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean -- with vast quantities of cocaine destined for the U.S. and Europe...
...even South Korea. Prosecutors have lined up a formidable rogues' gallery of drug dealers, $ dope pilots, shady businessmen and former Noriega military cronies to testify against him. The star witness will be Panamanian pilot Floyd Carlton Caceres, who claims he was the general's point man with the Medellin cartel. In addition, six of the 15 men indicted along with Noriega have been convicted and have turned state's evidence in exchange for a promise of leniency...
Even as those probes got under way, investigators in Colombia and Luxembourg examined dealings between Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel who died in a 1989 shootout with police, and a Colombian shadow bank that B.C.C.I. used to launder drug money. Among other things, the probers want to know why Colombian prosecutors slapped B.C.C.I. with a token $10,000 fine after discovering that the shadow bank took in a whopping $45 million in foreign currency in just six months in 1986 -- six times the amount B.C.C.I.'s Colombia branch reported for the entire year...
...third and so on -- and populated it with dozens of layabouts (slackers) in Austin. These motor-mouth dropouts have decided on a life of independent study: of the Kennedy assassination, or the space program (we've been on Mars since 1962, colonizing the galaxy with financing from the Medellin cartel), or Elvis (he's living in Las Vegas, working as -- what else? -- an Elvis impersonator). The wildest theories are received with a blissed-out smile. "Sorry I'm late," somebody says; the reply is "That's O.K. -- time doesn't exist." Yes, it does. Though set in the '90s, Slacker...
...Medellin cartel has not yet renounced the drug trade, but it does claim it is getting out of a subsidiary business: murder. The narcotics ring announced last week that it was ending its terrorist campaign, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of judges, journalists, police officers and other government officials during the past seven years. "We have decided to dismantle our entire military organization," said the cartel...