Word: medellin
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...quite so honorable as it seemed. Colombian police officials have told TIME that Medina was fired on orders from President Virgilio Barco Vargas after the general came under suspicion of being on the payroll of Pablo Escobar Gaviria, patriarch of one of the leading families of the Medellin drug cartel...
Shortly after dawn, five helicopter gunships took off from the Palanquero military air base southeast of Medellin. Thirty minutes later, skimming over the treetops of the Colombian jungle, the clattering swarm descended on a ranch outside the Magdalena River town of Puerto Triunfo. Thirty members of Colombia's elite National Police antinarcotics unit jumped from the copters and began searching the grounds. Their eventual payoff: discovery of three complexes containing eight cocaine laboratories. After the raiders methodically burned chemical dumps and bunkhouses, a five-man explosives team blew up brick buildings, generators and 15,000-gal. chemical holding tanks...
...initial C-Chase probe of narcotics "greenwashing" in Florida, which started in 1986, led them to BCCI's drug-money network. Posing as money launderers, "Musella," "Erickson" and other agents gradually infiltrated drug-trafficking circles. In May 1986 Gonzalo Moro Jr., reputed to be the chief launderer for the Medellin cartel, approached one of the agents with a proposition. If the agent were to open some Florida bank accounts and help Moro launder cash, Moro would pay a commission on each transaction...
...late 1987 Moro had introduced the agents to a Panamanian branch of BCCI for their laundering operation. The agents collected cash from Medellin dealers in the U.S. and deposited it at domestic banks, then wired the money to the account of a newly created shell corporation in the BCCI branch in Panama. The agents then provided the Colombian traffickers with signed blank checks that could be cashed at most banks...
Having extensively documented the laundering of funds through BCCI, U.S. Customs decided to close the net. In April, Erickson and Musella announced * their engagement and sent wedding invitations to top BCCI officers and Medellin hoods. The two then played out their romantic charade, making preparations for their nuptials...