The Cali Cartel (Spanish: Cartel de Cali) was a drug cartel based in southern Colombia, around the city of Cali and the Valle del Cauca. The founders were brothers Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela and José Santacruz Londoño. They broke away from Pablo Escobar and his Medellín associates in 1988, when Hélmer “Pacho” Herrera joined what became a four-member board of directors running the cartel.
At the height of the Cali Cartel’s reign, from 1993 to 1995, they were said to control over 80% of the world’s cocaine market and were directly responsible for the growth of the cocaine market in Europe, controlling 80% of controlled the cocaine market. market there too. By the mid-1990s, the leaders of the Cali Cartel were a criminal empire that exploited billions per year. The cartel was considered by law enforcement to be the most powerful criminal organization in the world.
Foundation
The Cali Cartel was formed by the Rodriguez brothers Orejuela and Santacruz, all of whom came from what has been described as a higher social background than most other traffickers of the time. The recognition of this social background was reflected in the group’s nickname as “Los Caballeros de Cali” (“Lords of Cali”). The group originally gathered as a ring of kidnappers known as “Las Chemas”, which was led by Luis Fernando Tamayo García. Las Chemas was involved in numerous kidnappings, including that of two Swiss citizens: a diplomat, Herman Buff, and a student, Zack “Jazz Milis” Martin. The kidnappers reportedly received $700,000 in ransom, which is believed to have been used to finance their drug trafficking empire.
The assembled group first engaged in the marijuana trade. Due to the product’s low profit margin and the large quantities required for the trade to cover the funds, the young group decided to shift their focus to a more lucrative drug: cocaine. In the early 1980s, the cartel sent Hélmer Herrera to New York City to set up a distribution center, at a time when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) considered cocaine less important than heroin.
The leadership of the Cali Cartel consisted of members Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, José Santacruz Londoño and Hélmer Herrera. Some top associates were Victor Patiño Fomeque, Henry Loaiza Ceballos, ex-guerrilla member José Fedor Rey and Phanor Arizabaleta-Arzayus.
Organization
In the absence of a tough DEA policy on cocaine, the trade flourished. The group developed and organized itself into multiple “cells” that appeared to operate independently, yet reported to a celeno (“manager”). The independent clandestine cell system distinguishes the Cali Cartel from the Medellín Cartel. The Cali Cartel operated as a tight-knit group of independent criminal organizations, in contrast to the centralized structure of the Medellíns under leader Pablo Escobar.
The Cali Cartel eventually became “the most powerful criminal organization in the world. No drug organization can match them today or perhaps ever in history.” according to then-DEA Administrator Robert C. Bonner. and was respectively called “the largest and most powerful crime syndicate we have ever known” by Thomas Constantine.
Each leader of the Cali Cartel had his own operation that he could run as he saw fit. There were five major Cali trade groups that were separate, but also worked together when their interests aligned. This included, but was not limited to, transporting drugs into the United States and money laundering. According to a 1994 DEA report, the Rodriguez brothers, Miguel and Gilberto, were the most successful and powerful members of the cartel. As such, they also controlled the Cali Cartel’s operations on a large scale. Gilberto, known as the “chess player” for his ability to think strategically, oversaw the cartel’s long-term plans while his younger brother handled day-to-day operations; micro-managing every detail. While certain groups dealt with only certain aspects of the cartel, the Rodriguez brothers were involved in all aspects, from production to transportation, from wholesale distribution to money laundering. Jose “Chepe” Santacruz-Londono, one of the most violent leaders, had his talent in international cocaine transport and created an extensive network that allowed the cocaine to move from Colombia to its final destination, usually the United States. Specifically, he had a center of US operations in New York, where the DEA seized two cocaine conversion laboratories in June 1992. Subsequently, the Urdinola brothers were possibly the most violent of the group, having murdered more than 100 individuals in Colombia, according to some estimates. They also distributed cocaine throughout the United States, from Los Angeles to Miami and New York City. The group also expanded into the trade in Colombian heroin, a product that most groups stayed away from. Finally, Raul and Luis Grajales, cousins by marriage, formed a cautious duo that tried to portray themselves as legitimate. Their operation took them to Western Europe, where they attempted to establish new routes from Colombia. They used Eastern Europe and old Soviet countries to route the cocaine to Western Europe. The five groups all coexisted under the name of the Cali Cartel.
Activities
The Cali Cartel would become known for its innovations in trade and manufacturing, moving its refining operations from Colombia to Peru and Bolivia, and for pioneering new trade routes through Panama. The cartel also diversified into opium and is said to have employed a Japanese chemist to help refine it. Venezuelan General Ramon Guillen Davila led the Venezuelan National Guard unit tasked with interdicting cocaine shipments, which was the CIA’s most trusted narcotics agent in Venezuela. He worked with Mark McFarlin and Jim Campbell, and was accused by US authorities of smuggling 22 tons of cocaine from the Cali Cartel from 1987 to 1991, known as Operation North (Spanish: Operación Norte).
According to reports and testimony by Thomas Constantine before the US Congress, “Cali is said to be the dominant group in the South American heroin trade due to their access to the opium growing areas of Colombia.” The debate over the cartel’s participation in the heroin trade continues. It is believed that the cartel’s leaders were not involved in the heroin trade, but close associates of theirs, such as Ivan Urdinola-Grajales, were, and that they worked with heroin distribution centers.
At the height of the Cali Cartel’s reign, they were cited as controlling 80% of the world cocaine market and as directly responsible for the growth of the cocaine market in Europe. By the mid-1990s, the Cali Cartel’s human trafficking empire was a multibillion-dollar enterprise.
After Gilberto made a trip to Spain in the mid-1980s, the cartel began expanding its operations in Europe and developed a working relationship with tobacco smugglers from Galicia, Spain. But in particular, the Cali Cartel formed a strategic alliance with the powerful criminal organization Camorra. Cali supplied the cocaine and the Camorra took care of the distribution throughout Europe.
Finance: Cali Cartel Money Laundering Chart.
To launder the incoming money from the human trafficking operations, the Cali Cartel invested its money heavily in legitimate business ventures and in front companies to mask the money. In 1994, the cartel was believed to earn $5 billion in annual revenue from the US alone. With the influx of cash comes the need to launder the money. One of the first examples of the Cali Cartel’s money laundering operations occurred when Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela was able to secure the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of Banco de Trabajadores. It was believed that the bank was used to launder money for Pablo Escobar’s Cali Cartel and Medellín Cartel. Cartel members, through their connection with Gilberto, were allowed to overdraw accounts and take out loans without repayment. Semion Mogilevich reportedly instructed Natasha Kagalovsky to transfer Cali Cartel funds from Bank of New York accounts through Brazilian banks to offshore shell companies.
On this basis, Gilberto was able to establish the First InterAmericas Bank, which operated from Panama. In an interview with Time, Gilberto admitted that money had been laundered through the bank; however, he attributed the lawsuit solely to legal actions. The money laundering, which Gilberto said was “in accordance with Panamanian law”, led US authorities to pursue him. Gilberto later, in 1979, started the Grupo Radial Colombiano, a network of more than 30 radio stations and a pharmaceutical chain called Drogas la Rebaja, which at its peak had more than 400 stores in 28 cities, with 4,200 employees. The value of the pharmaceutical chain was estimated at $216 million. As a result of the Cali Cartel’s ownership of the chain, it was the target of 85 bombings by Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel from January 1988 to May 4, 1990, killing a total of 27 people.
Russian state connections
According to Felipe Turover Chudínov, a senior intelligence officer in the KGB’s Foreign Intelligence Directorate, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin secretly decreed in the early 1990s that Russia would become an international hub through which narcotics were trafficked, including cocaine and heroin. South America and heroin from Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Yuri Skuratov supported Turover’s statements and began numerous investigations into corruption among high-ranking Russian government officials. Alexander Litvinenko provided a detailed diagram of narcotics trafficking, showing the relationships between Russian government officials and the Russian mafia, and showing Vladimir Putin and numerous others involved in drug trafficking, including narcotics trafficking. After Operation Troika, which targeted the Tambov gang, Spanish prosecutor José Grinda agreed, adding that to avoid prosecution, numerous indicted persons became deputies in the Russian Duma, especially in the Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and obtained parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
St. Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG or SPAG is a real estate company registered in Germany under Putin’s control in 1992 and suspected by German police of facilitating St. Petersburg gangsters, Colombian drug lords and transcontinental money laundering. Kumarin-Barsukov, of the Russian mafia Tambov, was a partner in Znamenskaya, a subsidiary of SPAG. Vladimir Smirnov was Znamenskaya’s general director and Kumarin-Barsukov was his deputy. Due to his 200 shares or 20% control, Vladimir Smirnov was Putin’s voting proxy in SPAG. Jalol Khaidarov (Russian: Джалол Хайдаров) stated that the final destination of the money was to the “Operator Trade Center” in Liechtenstein, but also said that the Bank of New York was a participant. In the early 2000s, company co-founder Rudolf Ritter was arrested in Liechtenstein for laundering cocaine money for the Cali Cartel. Robert Walner was the chief prosecutor in the Liechtenstein capital Vaduz.
Former Ukrainian presidential bodyguard Nikolai Melnichenko listened to the following conversation between Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and his security chief Leonid Derkach about SPAG:
Leonid Derkach: Leonid Danilovich. We have some interesting material here from the Germans. One of them has been arrested.
Leonid Kuchma (reading): Ritter, Rudolf Ritter.
Leonid Derkach: Yes, and about that affair, the drug smuggling. Here are the documents. They handed them all out. Here is also Vova Putin.
Leonid Kuchma: Is there something wrong with Putin?
Leonid Derkach: The Russians have already bought everything. Here are all the documents. We are the only ones who have them now. I think [FSB chief] Nikolai Patrushev comes from the 15th to the 17th. This gives him something to work with. This is what we will keep. They want to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.
Later in the conversation, Derkach states that “they have bought up all these documents throughout Europe and only the rest is in our hands.”
According to the Center for Public Integrity, Alfa-Bank was listed in a 1997 FSB report as a money launderer for Colombian drug lords. Alfa Bank subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against the Center for Public Integrity (the claim was dismissed by the court, although this was essentially based on the lack of any evidence of malice on the part of the defendant; the lawsuit memorandum admits that some of the allegations in the FSB report may be fabricated). Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the chess player, worked closely through Petr Aven, Alfa-Bank and Alfa-Eco to offshore locations such as Gibraltar, the Bahamas and other places to launder money for capitalization with Russian state-owned companies such as Alfa Bank, Alfa-Estate , RAO Gazprom and numerous other companies involved in transportation, non-ferrous metals, oil refineries, oil production and power generation, which underwent privatization.[46] Within days of this report’s release in 1997, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) raided Alfa-Eco’s premises and found many compromising documents.
With Israel as a base, the Russian mafia moved heroin and Colombian cocaine, sometimes through Venezuela, through Israel, where money laundering of narcotics profits would take place, to Saint Petersburg, while the Russian Kurgan mafia (Russian: Курганская организованная преступная группировка) provided security.
According to Alexander Litvinenko, when Putin was deputy mayor for economic affairs of St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, he organized a heroin supplier from Afghanistan, using ethnic Uzbek criminals and corrupt KGB and later FSB officers, including those in Moscow established KGB Colonel Evgeny G. Khokholkov, the Oleg Ivanov, created the Russian mafia Izmaylovskaya and was led by Anton Malevsky, including mafia leaders Gafur Rakhimov, Vyacheslav Ivanov (“Yaponchik” (Япончик) or Little Japanese), who established the Uzbek networks in America controlled, and Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (Russian: Алик Тахтахунов). ) (“Taiwanchik” (Тайванчик) or Little Taiwan), who controlled the Uzbek networks in Europe, and Salim Abdulaev. These networks also supplied Europe and America with cocaine from the Cali KGB cartel. Robert Eringer, head of Monaco’s security service, confirmed Litvinenko’s dossier on Vladimir Putin’s involvement in European drug trafficking. The Ismailovskaya mafia is closely linked to Oleg Deripaska, Andrei Bokarev, Michael Cherney and Iskander Makhmudov through the MIB bank account of their Switzerland-based Blond Investment Corporation. Rudolf Ritter in Liechtenstein was the financial manager of both SPAG and the Ismailovskaya mafia. Alexander Afanasyev (“Afonya”) was connected to both SPAG and the Ismailovskaya mafia through his Panama-registered Earl Holding AG, of which Ritter was also a signature, as well as Berger International Holding, Repas Trading SA and Fox Consulting. Juan Carlos Saavedra represented the Cali Cartel in Spain. In October 2015, Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda stated that any part of “the case could be recalled to Spain”.
During a meeting in Miami in 1993 between Sergei Mikhailov and Viktor Averin (Russian: Виктор Аверин) of MAB International (Russian: «МАБ Интернэшнл»), who had flown in from Vienna, Yuri Yesin (Russian: Юр ий Есин), who was from Italy flown in, and Sergei “Sylvester” Timofeev, Yuri Yesin would have exclusive control over Italy to facilitate connections between Italians and Colombians. Yesin was the head of the Vladivostok-based organized crime group Primorskaya, headed a Russian oil joint venture Globus Trading (Russian: «Глобус Трейдинг»), and had very close ties to the vice-president of the Italian oil company Eni Alberto Grotti. Yesin was supported by a KGB agent in Italy, Dmitry Naumov (Russian: Дмитрий Наумов), who was very close to Grigory Luchansky [ru; UK; the].
In late September 2020, it was revealed that Cali/KGB cocaine had been transported to Russia via the Russian Embassy in Argentina for years.
Discipline
Political violence was largely ignored by the Cali Cartel, as the threat of violence was often sufficient. The cartel’s organization was structured so that only people with family in Colombia would conduct operations involving both Cali and American locations, keeping the family within the cartel’s reach. Family members became the cartel’s assurance that its members would neither assist government officials nor refuse payment for products received. The threat of death also hung over those who made mistakes. It is believed that the cartel often killed junior members who made egregious mistakes.
Social cleansing
In his book End of Millennium, Manuel Castells states that the Cali Cartel had participated in the social cleansing of hundreds of desechables (“discardables”). The desechables included prostitutes, street children, petty thieves, homosexuals and the homeless.
Together with some local residents, the Cali Cartel formed parties calling themselves grupos de limpieza social (“social cleansing groups”) who murdered the desechables, often leaving signs reading: “Cali limpia, Cali linda” (“clean Cali, beautiful Cali”). The bodies of the murdered people were often thrown into the Cauca River, which later became known as the “River of Death”. The municipality of Marsella in Risaralda eventually went bankrupt due to the costs of recovering corpses and performing autopsies.
Revenge
In the 1980s and early 1990s, communist guerrillas attacked the drug cartels. In 1981, the then guerrilla group Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19; “April 19 Movement”) kidnapped Marta Nieves Ochoa, sister of the Ochoa brothers of the Medellín Cartel, Jorge, Fabio and Juan David. M-19 demanded a ransom of $15 million for Marta’s safe release, but was rejected. In response to the kidnapping, the Medellín and Cali cartels, as well as their associated human traffickers, formed the group Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS; “Death to Kidnappers”). Traffickers contributed money, rewards, equipment and manpower for MAS operations. Shortly afterwards, leaflets were dropped on a football field in Cali announcing the group’s formation. The MAS began capturing and torturing M-19 members in retaliation. Within three days, Marta Nieves was released. However, the MAS group would continue to operate, and hundreds of murders would be attributed to them.
In 1992, the guerrilla faction Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC; “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia”) kidnapped Christina Santa Cruz, the daughter of Cali Cartel leader José Santacruz Londoño. The FARC demanded a ransom of $10 million in exchange for Christina’s safe return. In response, the Cali Cartel kidnapped twenty or more members of the Colombian Communist Party, the Patriotic Union, the United Workers Union, and the sister of Pablo Catatumbo, a representative of the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordinating Board. Ultimately, Christina and Catatumbo’s sister were released after talks. It is unknown what happened to the other hostages captured by the cartel.
During Pablo Escobar’s narco-terror war against the Colombian government, it is believed that an assassin tried to kill Herrera while he was attending a sporting event. The gunman opened fire with a machine gun on the crowd where Herrera was sitting, killing nineteen people. However, he did not hit Herrera. It is believed that Herrera was one of the founders of Los Pepes, a group that operated with authorities with the intention of killing or capturing Pablo Escobar.
The Cali Cartel then hired a member of the Colombian military, a civil engineer named Jorge Salcedo. They wanted him to help them plan an assassination of Pablo Escobar. They hired him because they heard that Salcedo had in the past befriended and hired a group of mercenaries to wage war against the left-wing guerrillas in an operation sanctioned by the Colombian military. The mercenary group consisted of twelve former special operations soldiers, including the British Special Air Service. Feeling it was his patriotic duty, Salcedo accepted the deal to bring the mercenaries back to Colombia and help plan the operation to kill Pablo Escobar.
The group of British ex-soldiers accepted the offer. The cartel provided the mercenaries with food, housing and weapons. The plan was to attack Escobar at his Hacienda Nápoles complex. They trained for a few months until they heard that Escobar would be staying at the compound to celebrate his soccer team winning a tournament. They would be deployed in the early morning with the help of two heavily armed Hughes 500 helicopters and a surprise attack from Escobar. They painted the helicopters to look like police helicopters to confuse them even more. They took off and headed towards the compound, but one of the helicopters crashed on a mountainside, minutes away from the compound. The pilot died during the crash. The plan was aborted and they had to conduct a rescue mission on the dense mountainside.
Ultimately, Escobar went to prison, where he continued to run his Medellin cartel and threaten rivals from his cell. The second plot to kill Escobar was to bomb the prison using a privately owned A-37 Dragonfly surplus ground attack jet bomber. The Cali Cartel had a connection in El Salvador, a general of the El Salvador Army who illegally sold them four 500 pound bombs for about half a million dollars.
Salcedo flew to El Salvador to oversee the plan to retrieve the bombs and take them to an airport where a civilian plane would land to pick them up and take them to Colombia. But when the plane landed at the airport, they discovered it was a small business plane. They attempted to load the four bombs, and what was planned to take a few minutes took more than 20 minutes. By this time, there was a crowd of citizens gathered at the airport and curious about what was going on. Only three bombs fit, stacked in the small passenger cabin. The plane took off and Salcedo left the fourth bomb behind and went back to his hotel. The morning after, the activities of the night before were all over the news. Salcedo narrowly escaped El Salvador and was arrested before the botched pickup came to light. Law enforcement officers had discovered the bomb and some of the people involved in the operation were arrested, and they told authorities about the plot to kill Escobar with the bombs. The Cali Cartel then decided to call off the aerial bombardment.
For Salcedo there was no way back. The Colombian government labeled him a criminal who now works for the Cali Cartel, and his employers still wouldn’t let him go. Salcedo then arranged security for the Orejuela family, but was then forced to witness an execution of four Panamanians and was tasked with organizing the murder of Guillermo Pallomari, their own cartel accountant. Salcedo was faced with a choice: kill or risk being killed along with his family. Salcedo then decided to take revenge and save Pallomari and himself by contacting the US Central Intelligence Agency and working as an informant. This turned out to be the death knell for the Cali cartel. For his services, Salcedo and his extended family were relocated to the US and he received a reward of approximately $1.7 million.
Counterintelligence
The Cali Cartel’s counterintelligence center TN Education Center often surprised the DEA and Colombian officials. During a raid on the Cali Cartel’s offices in 1995, it was discovered that the cartel had monitored all telephone calls in and out of Bogotá and Cali, including the US Embassy in Bogotá and the Ministry of Defense. With the laptop, Londoño was able to listen in on telephone conversations and analyze telephone lines for telephone taps. Although officials were able to detect the use of the laptop, they would not be able to decrypt many of the files due to advanced encryption techniques. It was also believed that Londoño had a person within the phone company itself, which officials realized when he was able to identify a wiretap, a wiretap placed directly at the phone company, rather than at his home. Londoño’s lawyer soon sent an official message asking for legality and for a warrant if one was produced.
The list of government officials and officials on the Cali cartel’s payroll reportedly included 5,000 taxi drivers. The taxi drivers would let the cartel know who arrived in the city and when, as well as where they were staying. By having numerous taxi drivers on its payroll, the cartel was able to monitor the movements of government officials and dignitaries. According to Time magazine, in 1991, agents from the DEA and U.S. Customs (now ICE) monitored a shipment being unloaded in Miami, only to later learn that the DEA agents were simultaneously targeted by Cali surveillance.
Jorge Salcedo, a member of the Colombian military, was put in charge of the cartel’s intelligence and later provided Miguel’s security. Ironically, he would later play a crucial role in helping to destroy the cartel and determine where Miguel was hiding. He designed and set up a vast hidden radio network throughout the city, allowing members to communicate wherever they were. They also had many law enforcement people working for them, including a high-ranking member of the Bloque de Búsqueda (Search Bloc) who was looking for the Cali Cartel’s top leaders. When the police finally cornered Miguel in an apartment, the double agent was there (along with other law enforcement officers, including two DEA agents) looking for the secret compartment in which Miguel was hiding. The police could not find him in time and were forced to leave the apartment. They maintained a perimeter around the building to prevent his escape. The double agent was crucial in helping Miguel escape, as he hid Miguel in his car and drove away from the scene without a care in the world.
Medellín Cartel Relations: First InterAmericas Bank
Jorge Ochoa, a high-ranking financier from Medellín, had been childhood friends and years later co-owned Panama’s First InterAmericas Bank. The institution was later cited by US officials as a money laundering operation, allowing both the Cali Cartel and the Medellín Cartel to move and launder large amounts of money. Only through diplomatic pressure on then Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was the US able to put an end to the bank’s use as a money laundering front.[62] In a Time magazine interview, Gilberto Rodriguez admitted to laundering money through the bank, but noted that the process did not violate any Panamanian laws.
Muerte a Secuestradores
The two cartels participated in other joint ventures in later years, such as the creation of Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS), which successfully recovered Ochoa’s kidnapped sister, Marta Nieves Ochoa. Building on MAS’s previous success, the cartels and independent traffickers would meet again.
It is believed that the second meeting was the beginning of an organizational trade between the main participants, the Medellín Cartel and the Cali Cartel. The two cartels divided the major distribution points in the United States: the Cali Cartel took New York City and the Medellín Cartel took South Florida and Miami; Los Angeles was there for the taking.
It is believed that the cartels, through their ties to MAS, have decided to work together to stabilize the prices, production and shipments of the cocaine market. However, the strategic alliance formed with the establishment of MAS in 1981 began to crumble between 1983 and 1984 due to the ease of competition. As the cartels set up infrastructure, routes, transportation methods, and bribes, it became easier for competitors to make similar deals or leverage deals already made by other cartels. In 1987, the collaboration that had arisen through the founding of the MAS no longer existed. Contributing to the downfall were Rodríguez Gacha of the Medellín Cartel, who attempted to establish himself in the New York City market, which had previously been ceded to the Cali Cartel, and the 1986 arrest of Jorge Ochoa at a police roadblock , who deemed the Medellín Cartel suspicious and attributed it in part to the Cali Cartel.
Los Pepes
In later years, as Pablo Escobar’s narco-terror war against the Colombian government escalated, the government began to strike back in increasingly escalating fighting. While the Medellín Cartel weakened due to the fighting and constant pressure, the Cali Cartel grew in strength and eventually founded Los Pepes, or Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar (“People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar”). Los Pepes was founded specifically to take on the Medellín Cartel and bring about the downfall of Pablo Escobar.
It is believed that Los Pepes provided information to Search Bloc, a joint police and military unit created specifically to track down Medellín leaders. In exchange for information, Los Pepes received assistance from the US counter-terrorism unit Delta Force, through its ties to Search Bloc. By the time Escobar was captured and ultimately died in December 1993, Los Pepes was responsible for the deaths or executions of more than 60 associates or members of the Medellín Cartel. The death of Pablo Escobar led to the dismantling of the Medellín Cartel and the rise of the Cali Cartel.
Police: Attack
Although the Cali Cartel operated with a degree of immunity early on, due to its ties to the government and the Medellín Cartel’s narco-terrorism war against the Colombian government, they were still subject to drug busts. In 1991 alone, law enforcement agencies seized 67 tons of cocaine, 75% of which came from the Cali Cartel. In total, the United States Customs Service (USCS) alone spent 91,855 hours and 13 years investigating the Cali Cartel, seizing 50 tons of cocaine and $15 million in assets.
In 1991, a shipment of cocaine hidden in concrete piles was intercepted at the Miami seaport with the help of a drug-sniffing dog. It led to the seizure of 12,000 kilos of cocaine and several arrests, prompting US Customs to begin Operation Cornerstone, which lasted fourteen years. In another seizure the following year, a USCS wiretap of Harold Ackerman, whose tapes were derived from the 1991 seizure, enabled the arrest of seven people and 6,000 kilos of cocaine hidden in a shipment of broccoli. In related arrests, accounting ledgers were seized, allowing the identification of another shipment sent hidden in tiles to Panama. This information was passed on to Panamanian authorities and led to the seizure of 5,100 kilograms (11,244 lb).
In 1993, US Customs struck again against the Cali Cartel, this time seizing 5,600 kilograms (12,346 lb) while pursuing Raul Marti, the only remaining member of the defunct Miami cell. It is believed that these successive raids forced the cartel to route its shipments through Mexico; However, that didn’t stop US Customs. In 1993, three seagoing vessels were intercepted, carrying a total of 17,000 kilograms (37,479 lb).
Major arrests
Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela is escorted by DEA and ICE agents
Between June and July 1995, the remaining six of the cartel’s seven heads were arrested. Gilberto was arrested in his home and Henry Loaiza-Ceballos, Victor Patiño-Fomeque and Phanor Arizabaleta-Arzayus surrendered to authorities. Jose Santa Cruz Londoño was captured in a restaurant and a month later Miguel Rodriguez was arrested during a raid.
The Rodríguez brothers were extradited to the United States in 2006 and pleaded guilty in Miami, Florida to charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. After their confession, they agreed to forfeit $2.1 billion in assets. However, the agreement did not require them to cooperate in other investigations. They were solely responsible for identifying the assets resulting from their cocaine trafficking. Colombian officials raided and seized the Drogas la Rebaja pharmacy chain, replacing 50 of its 4,200 employees for “serving the interests of the Cali cartel”.