U.S. attorney: '97 Colombian president, Congress bribed by cartel

[Judi Lynn]

U.S. attorney: '97 Colombian president, Congress bribed by cartel

By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press Writer

March 17, 2005

A U.S. federal prosecutor says the Cali drug cartel bribed former President Ernesto Samper to win passage of a favorable extradition law, prompting an angry denial Thursday from Samper. The dispute throws into doubt future extraditions of drug trafficking suspects from Washington's key ally in Latin America.

U.S. Attorney Paul Perez said Samper received $5 million in bribes from the Cali cartel to promote passage of the Colombian law that prohibits extraditions for crimes committed before December 1997, when the law was passed. The Cali cartel controlled the world's cocaine trafficking networks in the mid-1990s but went into decline after its leaders were arrested in Colombia in 1995.

Perez, in a document filed March 9 in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla., disparaged Colombia's extradition law and said evidence should be permitted against accused drug kingpin Joaquin Mario Valencia Trujillo for crimes committed before December 1997. Valencia was extradited from Colombia last year.

Perez's court statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, marks the first time Samper has been publicly accused of receiving traffickers' bribes during his 1994-98 term. He previously was accused of taking Cali cartel contributions during his election campaign.(snip/...)

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