Word: lehder
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Charges against Vesco outside Cuba are myriad if not of mythic proportions. One is the 1989 U.S. indictment of Vesco in absentia for facilitating the narcotics-trafficking activities of Colombian drug kingpin Carlos Lehder-Rivas, who from 1978 to '80 was using the Bahamas as a transshipment point for cocaine. Vesco was living in the Bahamas at that time and is thought to have helped Lehder bribe influential Bahamian officials to look the other way while coke-laden planes landed at and took off from Norman's Cay, a Bahamian island on which Lehder had built an outsize landing strip...
...prosecution's most sensational witness -- ex-Medellin drug boss Carlos Lehder -- testified that at one point 80% of all Colombian cocaine shipments were flowing through Panama, yielding Noriega $1 million a month in payoffs for looking the other way. Yet despite his cartel position, Lehder never met Noriega and had no direct knowledge of payoffs. But drug trafficker Gabriel Taboada testified that he saw Noriega visit the Medellin cartel offices and accept a bag with $500,000, while drug pilot Roberto Streidinger said he delivered a gift of six dancing girls...
Pasty-faced after four years and 10 months in federal prison, where he is serving a life sentence plus 135 years for drug trafficking, Lehder conceded that he had only hearsay knowledge of the payment. Responding to the accusation, former contra leaders denied receiving Medellin money and rejected any suggestion of involvement in guns-for-drugs deals with the cartel...
Even more startling was Lehder's claim that in 1982, two U.S. officials offered him a "green light" to smuggle cocaine into the U.S., provided that he let them use Norman Cay, a Bahamian island he owned, to move guns to the contras. U.S. sources deny that such an offer was made but confirm that Lehder approached an American consular official and an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and tried to sell them the island for use as a drug-interdiction post...
...Lehder's bizarre testimony was a serious setback for the prosecution's case: by denying his specific charges, the U.S. undermined his credibility as an anti-Noriega witness...