Word: gacha
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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...
...that city's cartel did more than anyone to put cocaine on the street corners of America. But Medellin's drug power has been shattered by its long and vicious war on the Colombian government. A 22-month counterattack by the authorities has killed drug boss Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, forced the surrender of his fellow cocaine barons, the brothers Jorge, Juan David and Fabio Ochoa, destroyed dozens of labs and airstrips and scattered lesser capos abroad. In the most stunning blow yet to the cartel, Medellin chief Pablo Escobar Gaviria surrendered last week under a plea-bargaining program that...
Better coordination is also needed. Last year army troops were closing in on cartel chieftain Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha when an A-37 air force reconnaissance jet buzzed overhead. The aircraft was on an unrelated mission, but it alerted Rodriguez Gacha to the military's presence, and he escaped. And the explosion of narcoterrorism has diverted manpower: half of DAS's 3,000 agents guard politicians and judges whose lives are at risk...
Escobar's demise would probably not even slow down coke production. Rodriguez Gacha's death last December created a power vacuum, which a new, even more aggressive generation of drug merchants is vying to fill...
...supporting the cartel? Anyone who buys cocaine. But foreign governments help too. Earlier this year, Colombia disclosed that Israel had sold a large consignment of automatic weapons to Antigua, purportedly for its army. The guns wound up on one of Rodriguez Gacha's country ranches, where they were confiscated after his death. Chemicals needed to refine cocaine, once ordered from the U.S. and Western Europe, now come from Brazil and Ecuador, which are also becoming new production centers...