Word: cartels
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Still, most Mexicans found his claims plausible. Virtually everyone accused of involvement so far has family, business or political ties to the northern state of Tamaulipas, which is the base for a ring of drug traffickers known as the Gulf Cartel. Indeed, it was Ruiz Massieu himself who headed the government's antidrug efforts and led a crackdown against the cartel, publicly targeting its elusive chief, Juan Gracia Abrego. Now Abrego stands accused of having put up the $330,000 allegedly paid for the assassination...
This week, two months after Quinn's luncheon interview, the Colombian government appears to be willing to reopen discussions of surrender. In a written statement to TIME, Samper said he had concluded that merely chasing after traffickers was not effective. "It is no good to have the cartel bosses in jail if they continue narcotrafficking," he wrote. "We know from experience that it is more important to dismantle the cartels than to incarcerate their leaders. Jailing them is necessary, but it is just not enough." An aide amplified that "the door is open on the surrender program again...
Such debates have their roots in the tenure of the previous Colombian President, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo. His credentials as a drug fighter are undisputed: he ordered the bloody and ultimately successful 17-month campaign against the Medellin cartel. Yet few would deny the vast, perhaps controlling influence of surviving drug lords. While the Medellin cowboys attempted reign by Uzi, shooting four presidential candidates in 1989, the Rodriguezes and fellow members of their cartel are known as the gentle dons. They rely on the quiet clout that a profit estimated by DEA at $7 billion a year can buy. The money...
...retired Bogota DEA chief Joe Toft says narcodollars have influenced "from 50% to 75% of the Colombian Congress." The traffickers have also bought an unknown number of prosecutors, policemen and soldiers. But "their most significant victory," claims a U.S. diplomat, was the surrender program for retiring dons. "The Cali cartel dictated the penal-code reform," he says. Under the 1993 code revisions, drug traffickers who turn themselves in can have their sentences reduced by as much as two-thirds at the discretion of a judge or prosecutor. Any pending charges to which they do not plead are dismissed and cannot...
...Cali cartel boss tries to cut a suspect deal...