Accused Cali kingpin's 'tainted' funds may be denied to his defense

[Minstrel Boy]

Accused Cali kingpin's 'tainted' funds may be denied to his defense

BY SCOTT HIAASEN
Miami Herald
Wed Dec 29

Suspected of being the cofounder of a drug empire worth as much as $2 billion, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela was once among the richest men in Colombia.

But U.S. taxpayers could end up paying for his defense to trafficking conspiracy charges unless his current lawyer can show Rodríguez Orejuela has money to pay him that is untainted by cocaine.

On Tuesday, attorney Jose Quiñon asked to delay Rodríguez Orejuela's arraignment in U.S. District Court in Miami for a month so he can find legitimate assets held by Rodríguez Orejuela or his relatives.

...

Gilberto was extradited to Miami this month; his younger brother, also indicted in Miami, is in Colombia facing extradition. Prosecutors say the brothers blended their cocaine business with seemingly legitimate enterprises -- including pharmacies, construction companies, a soccer team and an airline -- in an effort to conceal drug profits. The U.S. government seeks to seize $2.1 billion from the cartel.
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/10521805.htm


Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, known as "The Chess Player"

Colombia drug kingpins to face trial in Miami

By Ann W. ONeill
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 24 2004

...

It is an ironic turn for the brothers, who never thought they would set foot inside a U.S. courtroom. As insurance, they allegedly financed a successful 1994 presidential campaign to keep cartel-friendly faces running Colombia's government. In the end, their efforts to avoid extradition helped make it happen.

Federal law enforcement officials consider the brothers their biggest trophy in the war on drugs since Medellín cartel leader Pablo Escobar was gunned down by Colombian police in 1993. But some experts say the extradition is more of a moral victory than a practical one. "They don't get any bigger than this, but it is largely symbolic," said Adam Isacson, director of programs for the Center for International Policy in Washington. "Gilberto is no longer a player."

...

"It's hard to believe," said Tom Cash, who ran the DEA's Miami office during the cartel's heyday. "These people were the untouchables in Cali." Cash credited the cartel's long run to its low profile and business acumen. "It's one of those proof positives that these cocaine traffickers were far from cowboys, much more like Wall Street businessmen who used their stealth and their brains and were extremely successful for a very long time," he said.

Now the Cali cartel has been replaced by smaller, more dangerous "baby cartels." Experts estimate as many as 300 mini cartels operate in Colombia.

...

Between 2000 and 2005, the United States will have spent nearly $4 billion, but Plan Colombia will end next year unless Congress approves additional funding.
http://cocaine.org/colombia/cali.html

Drug kingpin extradited to US

AP BOGOTA, COLOMBIA
Sunday, Dec 05

...

Rodriguez Orejuela, 64, was arrested in June 1995 in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, where the cartel was based. Police found him crouching in a hidden closet in a luxury apartment. Rodriguez Orejuela denied trafficking while behind bars.

"Colombia needs economic assistance from the United States and the US government needs to showcase results in the fight against drug trafficking," he told Semana magazine. "My brother and I have a symbolic value in this context."

...

Previous drug traffickers who have been extradited to the United States include former Medellin cartel leaders Fabio Ochoa, who in 2003 was sentenced in Miami to more than 30 years in prison for returning to the drug trade after winning amnesty at home; and Carlos Lehder, who was sentenced in 1988 to life without parole.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/12/05/2003213849


Medellin Cartel Co-Founder Carlos Lehder A Free Man in Gov't. Charade? -- Wife of Drug Lord Speaks

Carlos Lehder

Part One of a Multi-Part Series
by
Michael C. Ruppert, 2001


Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, aka Carlos Lehder, is the stuff of which legends are made. Legends are sometimes good, sometimes bad. As is the case with most legends there is a beautiful woman involved. There is also intrigue, crime, violence, corruption and betrayal. But legends, when examined closely, almost always tell more about the civilizations that create them than they do about the one who carries the name. Carlos Lehder is not a Colombian legend. He is an American legend. It is America that created him. America that made him rich. America where he began his criminal life. America where he was imprisoned and America that, it now appears, has set him free. It is America's shame that Lehder's freedom, if established, and alleged employment by the U.S. Government, are hidden behind lies told, not by Lehder himself, but by the American government to its own people.

In 1979-80, reportedly with the assistance of the CIA and legendary drug smuggler Barry Seal, Lehder co-founded the Medellin Cartel with Pablo Escobar and brothers Fabio and Jorge Ochoa. As celebrated on CNN and by recent books like Killing Pablo (Mark Bowden, 2001), Pablo Escobar was gunned down in a hail of Colombian bullets directed by U.S. intelligence in December, 1993. The Ochoas have faded into the jungle-like vortex of Latin American lore although an October 1999 Reuters story indicated that Fabio Ochoa had been arrested (again) in Bogota. Word of his promised extradition to the U.S. has been hard to find. Carlos Lehder remains the only cartel head to have ever been extradited to, then tried, convicted and sentenced to life plus 135 years in, the United States. Prosecutors agree that Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega - against whom Lehder testified in return for a reduced sentence of 55 "non-paroleable" years in 1989 - was merely one of Lehder's employees.

Other new material indicating that Lehder, after his 1987 arrest and extradition, provided information to the DEA that assisted in Escobar's downfall has been characterized by his prosecutor, former US Attorney Robert Merkle, as nearly worthless. "That's BS. We didn't need his help to get Escobar," says Merkle.

As disclosed in this first of a series of special reports, I have now amassed a sizeable body of documents, records, witness statements and even a tape recording of Lehder's alleged wife indicating that Carlos Lehder is a free man who has kept his money, who travels the world freely and who makes a mockery of any notion that he might be a federally protected witness - hiding to ensure his safety or the safety of his family. One telling clue to Lehder's apparent lack of fear is the fact that he is listed by name in 411 directory assistance in La Fayette, California, just outside San Francisco. My researcher, while looking for other information, came across the listing and sent it to me. I was able to confirm it as a listing for the Carlos Lehder - not a coincidence - through confidential sources who know Lehder's self-professed wife, Coral Marie Talavera Baca Lehder. And I have spoken to Coral by calling her at that number myself. Mrs. Lehder was, until June 22, a manager for the insurance giant AIG in San Francisco. Subsequent segments of this special series will focus on investigations into allegations of money laundering by AIG with and through the Arkansas Development Financial Authority in 1987 - the same year Lehder was originally captured.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_1.html

[seemslikeadream]

1. more

Maxine Waters -- From the web site of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D), California:

"I also had numerous telephone conversations with Coral Talavera Baca, the girlfriend of Rafael Cornejo, who was a relative and part of Norwin Meneses' drug trafficking organization, as well as a long-time business partner of Danilo Blandon, another central figure in the "Dark Alliance" series. I received information from Ms. Baca and Mr. Cornejo who were connected to Carlos Lehder, a Colombian drug dealer and co-founder of the Medellin Cartel. It was through Lehder's private island that the Medellin Cartel moved massive amounts of cocaine to Miami and the United States. Ms Baca had visited Carlos Lehder's private island and have information regarding the connection between Mr. Lehder and Norwin Meneses." -- http://www.house.gov/waters/31698pr.htm. Contacted for comment, Waters' office had not responded at press time.

"The Units also housed one of the most sought after drug Kingpins in the world. Carlos Lehder Rivas, leader of the Medellin Cartel. Lehder admitted to ordering hundreds of killings, including a member of the Colombian Supreme Court, politicians, and reporters. His net worth is over $3 billion yet only $2 million in assets were ever seized. I reviewed Lehder's plea assessment, he was convicted and sentenced to life plus 135 years with no chance for parole. And then he joined the program by agreeing to testify against Manuel Noriega, who in effect worked for Lehder. Federal officials immediately cut Lehder's sentence to 55 years with eligibility for parole. . Further sentence reductions made him eligible for deportation to Germany, his homeland. I have been told that Lehder is already in Germany.

"While in the Unit, Lehder developed new drug smuggling plans for after his release. He talked of a new frontier in the former republics of the Soviet Union. He and Gravano talked of forming a partnership in a new cartel using money given to them by our government. They asked me to join them and I turned them down.'

Gary Webb -- Contacted for comment Gary Webb responded: "Coral's relationship with Lehder, if there was one, was not very pertinent to what I was looking at." Webb said he saw correspondence suggesting that she and Lehder may have had a relationship a long time ago but whatever the nature of that relationship was or is, it was her private business and had no bearing on his inquiries as far as he could tell.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_1.html

:hi:

[Minstrel Boy]

2. Orejuela gets a mention in "Crossing the Rubicon"

Ironic how seldom the reverse is asked about the "seemingly legitimate enterprises" of our globalized narco-economy. Could, say, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Halliburton distinguish their legitimate profits from those by the drug trade which they've laundered into their balance sheets?

Orejuela gets a namecheck in Michael Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon in the important chapter "Connecting Drugs and Oil," in context of a report by the Center for Public Integrity which established a direct link between the facilities of Halliburton subsidy Brown and Root and "every drug-producing region and every drug-consuming region in the world." Ruppert discusses a guaranteed loan, through CIA cut-out banks, to the Russian financial conglomerate Alfa Group, which included $292 to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field. An official report of the Russian FSB claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven, "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia into Europe."

Ruppert writes:

Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family, were the same executives who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result, Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil field's could continue - and expand.

The CPI story reports allegations that organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had stolen the oil field by fraud. It then uses official reports from the FSB, oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers, and press accounts to establish a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

...

The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela...to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore.... The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies. The former KG agent "reported that there was evidence regarding Alfa Bank's involvement with the money laundering of Latin American drug cartels."

It would be difficult for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this, as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C Langdon Jr at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fundraiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."


:hi:

[InvisibleBallots]

5. You would be surprised how little they care about money laundering

I remember working for GE Capital and seeing their "anti-money laundering campaign" - it was a total joke. They passed out a four page memo, complete with cartoons of scary looking gangsters, with cute little slogans like "watch out for the bad guys!"

It's was little more than a CYA and everyone knew it and treated it like the joke it was. Wall Street would collapse without all the drug money.

[bin.dare]

4. Drugs, dollars, and euros ...

... another aspect of the business

http://slate.msn.com/id/2111504/
Even drug dealers are giving up on the dollar.
By Daniel Gross

... in the past two years, euros have also become easier to carry, store, and hide than dollars. Generally, the largest denomination of U.S. currency readily available is the $100 bill. But in the past two years, the European Central Bank has started to print 200-euro and 500-euro bills. These larger bills thus allow for the concentration of wealth in smaller packages. At today's rates, a 500-euro note is worth $682.

So if you wanted to, say, hide cash by swallowing it temporarily, euros would the obvious (and more comfortable) way to go. And indeed, as Grant notes, in October a drug mule traveling from Spain to Colombia was found to have an unexpected form of contraband in his stomach: $197,000 in euro notes. The same month, Fidel Castro declared that the dollar, which is tolerated as a means for Cuban-Americans to support their relatives in Cuba, was officially currency non grata and that the euro was most welcome.

For most products, losing international drug cartels and corrupt Third World dictators as customers would seem to be a desirable outcome. But these guys represent part of our long-standing and faithful base. If you think pundits are fretting about the slumping dollar now, just imagine what might happen if we start to lose the arms dealers

[bin.dare]

3. from the Guardian: Florez arrest

Drug linchpin held in Colombia

Dan Molinski in Bogotá
Thursday December 30, 2004
The Guardian

The Colombian police have captured a reputed leader of the drug cartel held responsible for half the cocaine sold in the United States in the 1990s.
Dagoberto Florez is on a list of people most wanted by the US authorities under a court order obtained in New York in May. Washington offered a $5m (currently £2.6m) reward for his capture.

He was seized on Tuesday in a rural area outside Medellín, Colombia's second city, the national police chief, General Jorge Daniel Castro, told reporters. He gave no details and said it was not decided who, if anyone, would get the reward.

Mr Florez is the second of nine reputed leaders of the Norte del Valle cartel named after US investigators traced a money trail from New York to cartel leaders in Colombia. Gabriel Puerta-Parra was arrested in October.

(more)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,11502,1380808,00.html