Word: colombia
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Despite having bank accounts that have ranged as far afield as Hong Kong, in the past few years Josa Santacruz Londono has rarely ventured outside Cali, Colombia's cocaine capital. In recent weeks, though, word leaked that the reputed mastermind behind the world's No. 1 drug cartel had fled to Bogota, flushed from cover by an elite government strike force that had been chasing him for months. Santacruz is sometimes called "El Gordo" -- the Fat One -- and knowing he likes to eat, General Rosso Josa Serrano Cadena, chief of the Colombian National Police, ordered his men to stake...
Then last March, the U.S. State Department accused the government of Colombian President Ernesto Samper Pizano of lacking the political will to go after Cali's bosses. Though the State Department stopped short of suggesting that the U.S. cut off aid to Colombia and veto loans from institutions such as the World Bank, the rebuke apparently rocked Samper, whose presidential campaign was alleged to have been partly financed by the cartel...
...controlling state officials. The Rodriguezes' counterintelligence operations have been impressively sophisticated as well. In 1991 DEA and U.S. Customs Service agents watching fence posts filled with cocaine being off-loaded in Miami were stunned to discover that Cali agents were watching them watch the fence posts. Last year Colombia seized a cartel computer with an unbreakable code encrypting its files. The computer was being used to analyze Cali phone records, determining which of the cartel's lines were tapped...
Just three days before the arrest of Cali chieftain Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela in Colombia, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo discussed his nation's involvement in the drug war with a group of TIME journalists. Meeting with Zedillo in his office at the Los Pinos presidential residence were managing editor James R. Gaines, editor at large Karsten Prager and Latin American bureau chief Laura Lopez...
Michael Abbell, a former Justice Department lawyer in charge of prosecuting drug smugglers, was indicted along with 60 others on charges of conspiring to protect members of Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel. Two other former Justice Department lawyers were also named in the indictment. Federal officials say the charges stem from activities the three conducted after they left the department. They charge that the three laundered money, fabricated evidence to helpcartel members facing prosecution, and told the Cali heads the name of an informant, whom the drug smugglers executed...