Word: colombianization
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...officials and is reportedly cooperating with the authorities. "In terms of the Cali cartel, it's not going to hurt them much because most of the top leadership has already been caught," reports Latin America bureau chief Laura Lopez. "But if he can say the cartel wrote checks to Colombian President Samper, and that Samper accepted them, then it's going to be devastating for the president - probably fatal for his administration." More than $6 million is rumored to have been accepted by Samper's campaign. Samper has steadfastly denied knowing that drug money was accepted by his campaign. COLOMBIAN...
There are signs that when it wants to, the CIA can clean house. Fernando Botero, the defense minister of Colombia, recalls a visit four months ago by agency officials who explained that they could no longer do business indiscriminately with the Colombian military, some of whose officers have death-squad links. From now on, "liaison" would occur only with officers found to be free of corruption and human-rights violations. Despite patriotic grumbling within his government, Botero agreed, and the result has pleased him. The agency drew closer to the Colombian National Police, one of the government's cleaner outfits...
...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 out several of the good restaurants in the northern part of the city. Last Tuesday night Santacruz and three business associates dropped by a steakhouse called Carbon de Palo...
Only a year ago the Cali kingpins were freely gadding about, unhampered by both the Colombian authorities and the rival Medellin cartel, which died along with its chief Pablo Escobar in 1993. The Cali cartel now handles 80% of the world's cocaine traffic, with a $7 billion gross last year in the U.S. alone. "This is probably the biggest organized-crime syndicate there has ever been," says Thomas Constantine, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "For their impact, profit and control, they're bigger than the Mafia in the U.S. ever was." Santacruz lived as a cocaine baron...
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...