Caribbean cocaine network smashed
-top Colombia ‘kingpin’, 50 others detained
Stabroek News
June 24, 2004
A man thought to be a top Colombian cocaine kingpin and 50 others have been arrested in a US-led probe spanning several Caribbean countries and aimed at crippling a drug export and money laundering ring that funnelled around three tonnes of cocaine into the US each month.
The Reuters news agency yesterday said US Attorney-General John Ashcroft announced the arrest of Elias Cobos-Munoz who he described as the head of a major drug trafficking group based in Colombia and Jamaica. He was detained in Colombia on Monday and charged in the US in the indictment unsealed yesterday in Washington. The US has since requested the extradition of the Colombian.
In tandem with the Colombian operation, Reuters said that more than 50 other “high-level traffickers” were nabbed in Panama, Jamaica, the Bahamas, the United States and Canada. The arrests were part of the final stage of a US-led assault on major trafficking organisations operating in the Caribbean and crowns a five-year probe.
“The trafficking organisations we have dismantled were responsible for distributing three metric tonnes of cocaine in this country every month, amounting to at least 10 to 12 percent of the US cocaine supply”, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Administrator Karen Tandy was quoted in the Reuters report as saying.
According to CNN, Ashcroft called the indictments “a significant victory over the culture of crime, of corruption and death that is fuelled by illicit drugs”.
“The Cobos-Munoz organisation allegedly generated nearly US$145M in proceeds from its drug trafficking activities”, Ashcroft said.
An Associated Press (AP) report out of Miami said that the investigation harvested seven tonnes of seized cocaine, one million doses of heroin, a tonne of marijuana and US$85M in cash and other assets.
Cobos-Munoz, targeted in Operation Busted Manatee, is among 41 of the most wanted traffickers identified by the US government. Meanwhile, AP said Operation Double Talk homed in on Bahamian and Jamaican shippers who ferried cocaine through South Florida to New York. US prosecutors said its leaders were Melvin Walter Maycock and Pedro Vincent Smith. The AP report added that in the indictment pinpointing the Colombians, investigators tracked down 11 drug money transactions totalling US$1M from Moscow and the Latvian cities of Riga and Ogre to Costa Rica utilising New York accounts at Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia and Bank of New York and Union Bank in San Francisco. Eighteen of the 19 persons charged in the Bahamas were detained in raids starting shortly after midnight yesterday. AP said that Jamaican authorities have also disclosed that they were holding musician and promoter Hartford Montaque following his arrest on a US warrant at his home in Montego Bay.
Another AP report out of Washington quoted Tandy as saying “We believe this operation will severely disrupt the entire Caribbean drug trade…they will answer in the courts of the same land where they profited from poisoning America’s children”.
All of those held could face up to life in prison on multiple drug conspiracy and distribution charges and 20 years if convicted on money laundering counts.
The US is currently pursuing an investigation involving Guyanese drug traffickers and money launderers. Around a dozen of them are said to have been indicted and US law enforcement officials visited Georgetown recently for discussions with the Attorney-General’s Chambers on what steps were necessary to proceed with planned extraditions. The indictments have not yet been unsealed and US officials are said to be putting together the relevant paperwork. Much of this investigation centred around the transport of cocaine between Guyana and New York and the laundering of proceeds.