Word: coke
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...narcos -- Gacha, Pablo Escobar Gaviria and the three brothers of Medellin's Ochoa family -- has not gone as well as he or the nation had hoped. Since Mob hit men assassinated presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in August and ignited Barco's offensive, the leaders of Colombia's coke cartels have gone into hiding, forfeiting posh estates and bank accounts; some law- enforcement officials believe that the drug princes have even undergone plastic surgery. Nevertheless, Gacha and company remain immensely powerful, with their pipeline to the U.S. merely dented and their profits still enormous. And in the past two weeks...
Last week a half-ton of dynamite stashed in a stolen truck exploded outside the headquarters of the DAS, the secret police in overall charge of the coke battle. The blast, which gouged a 30-ft.-deep crater and damaged buildings as far as 40 blocks away, killed at least 52 and injured 1,000. The day before the bombing, a judge involved in prosecuting the drug masters was gunned down while strolling the streets of Medellin. And nine days earlier, the narcos planted a bomb that ripped apart an Avianca jetliner en route from Bogota to Cali, claiming...
...during fiscal 1989, their haul totaled 89 tons, or 44% more than last year's. The volume, which is believed to be only a small percentage of the tons flooding the country, is evidence of more than just a frighteningly effective drug- smuggling industry. The wholesale value of the coke, as much as $28 billion, is testimony to another kind of dark genius. This is the scandalous ability of the coke kingpins to launder billions of dollars in drug proceeds using many of the same financial services available to the FORTUNE 500. In a wash cycle that often takes less...
...coke smugglers can accomplish this feat because they have plenty of help. They rely on a booming money-laundering industry that serves a clientele ranging from tax-avoiding corporations to the Iranscam schemers. The system depends on the collaboration, or often just the negligence, of bankers and other moneymen who can use electronic-funds networks and the secrecy laws of tax havens to shuffle assets with alacrity. The very institutions that could do the most to stop money laundering have the least incentive to do so. According to police and launderers, the basic fee for recycling money of dubious origin...
...that I did not think any amount of dieting would make her look like Bob Hope. "This is America," she said. "I have every right to pursue my dream. Some people want to be rocket scientists. I want to be Bob Hope. Now shut up and pass the diet Coke...