Gilberto José Rodríguez Orejuela (January 31, 1939 – May 31, 2022) was a Colombian drug lord and one of the leaders of the Cali Cartel . Orejuela formed the cartel with his brother, Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela , José Santacruz Londoño and Hélmer Herrera. The cartel rose to prominence in the early 1990s and was estimated to control approximately 80 and 90 percent of the U.S. and European cocaine markets, respectively, by the mid-1990s. Rodríguez Orejuela was captured by Colombian authorities after a police campaign in 1995 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released early in 2002 and arrested again in 2003, after which he was extradited to the United States. There he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, where he died in 2022.
Early life
Gilberto José Rodríguez Orejuela was born on January 31, 1939 in Mariquita, about 180 kilometers northwest of Bogotá. His family moved to Cali when he was a child. His father, Carlos Rodríguez, was a painter; his mother, Ana Rita Orejuela, was a housewife. After dropping out of high school at the age of 15, he began working as a drugstore clerk. He rose to manager and opened his own store at the age of 25.
Criminal career
While working his way up in the pharmacy world, Rodríguez Orejuela began his criminal career, involving kidnapping and then drug trafficking.
Cali Cartel
In the 1970s, Rodríguez Orejuela and his brother Miguel, along with José Santacruz Londoño and Hélmer Herrera, helped organize a loose consortium of drug trafficking gangs that became known as the Cali Cartel. Members participated in processing, shipping and distribution. The Rodríguez Orejuela brothers became the heads of the cartel’s most successful members. Gilberto was the strategic planner and visionary, nicknamed “The Chess Player” for his calculated approach; Miguel oversaw the daily operations. The cartel kept a low profile, without conspicuous parties, without conspicuous displays of wealth and without unnecessary violence.
In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Medellin Cartel , the Cali Cartel emerged as the largest cocaine trafficking organization in the world. They initially mainly dealt with marijuana and switched to cocaine in the 1980s. For a time, it was estimated that the Cali Cartel supplied approximately 80 percent of the cocaine in the United States through Rodriguez’s son, Jorge Alberto Rodriguez. and 90 percent of the European cocaine market.
On November 15, 1984, Gilberto was captured in Spain. At the time of his arrest he was accompanied by Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez . Gilberto had been in Spain to hold meetings with the aim of expanding cartel activities on the European continent. The cartel began working with human traffickers in Galicia and formed strategic alliances with the powerful Camorra, which would be responsible for distributing Cali cocaine throughout Europe. The Colombian government intervened to prevent Spain from extraditing Rodríguez Orejuela to the US. Instead, he was sent back to Colombia, where he was tried on the same charges and acquitted.
The Cali Cartel was less violent than its rival, the Medellín Cartel . While the Medellín Cartel was involved in a brutal campaign of violence against the Colombian government, the Cali Cartel was growing. After the death of Pablo Escobar, Colombian authorities turned their attention to the Cali Cartel. The police campaign against the cartel began in the summer of 1995. President Ernesto Samper sent a “joint task force” codenamed “Search Bloc,” formed by top police and elite commandos led by Police General Rosso José Serrano, which declared a comprehensive action . war against the drug cartels.
Capture and Imprisonment
On June 9, 1995, Rodríguez Orejuela was arrested by the Colombian National Police (PNC) during a home raid in Cali. He was found in a hidden compartment behind a TV. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was released in October 2002 under a controversial court order citing good behavior and participation in work-study programs issued by Deputy Judge Pedro José Suárez. The Colombian government halted the order and initiated an obstruction of the judicial investigation into Suárez. Within days, a second judge upheld the order and Rodríguez Orejuela was released.
In March 2003, Rodríguez Orejuela was arrested again by Colombian authorities in Cali, on new charges, after continuing to run the cartel from prison.
Extradition to the United States
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela processed after being captured
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela was extradited to the United States on December 3, 2004. His brother Miguel was also arrested.
On September 26, 2006, both Gilberto and Miguel were sentenced to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the US. In the plea deal, the U.S. agreed not to bring charges against their relatives in exchange for forfeiture of assets. The brothers lost $2.1 billion in illicit profits, and the US has not charged six of their relatives with money laundering and obstruction of justice. On the condition that they forfeit tainted assets, including bank accounts, businesses and luxury homes, 28 family members, including sons, daughters and nieces, were removed from a US Treasury sanctions list that listed them as members of the Cali Cartel were classified.
On November 16, 2006, the brothers pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Both were sentenced to an additional 87 months in prison. The two prison sentences would run concurrently.
At the time of his death, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela was serving a 30-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Butner, a medium-security facility in North Carolina. He was inmate number 14023-059 with a release date of July 15, 2029, at the age of 90.
On March 5, 2018, a Colombian court sentenced eight relatives of the Rodríguez brothers to nine years in prison for laundering money obtained during the Rodriguez brothers’ time as head of the Cali Cartel. Specifically, the court found that the family had used their legitimate businesses (including the pharmacy chain Drogas La Rebaja) to launder billions of pesos. These individuals had also transferred the money through different bank accounts to make it appear legitimate.
On February 6, 2020, Rodríguez Orejuela filed a request for parole under the First Step Act with a federal judge in Miami. The application was filed despite having served only half of his 30-year term. On April 28, 2020, Federal District Judge Federico Moreno denied the application, stating that there were no “extraordinary and compelling” grounds to support the application. The judge stated that “the court is completely unwilling to undermine and undo this public respect for the law, as well as the seriousness of the crimes committed” and that although Rodríguez Orejuela has endured a litany of chronic illnesses, including cancer, his criminal record is so abhorrent that there is no way he can effectively halve his sentence.
Personal life
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela’s children included Jaime Fernando, a graduate in international business from the University of Grenoble, two sons who studied at Stanford University and the University of Tulsa, and a son who studied systems engineering. Rodríguez Orejuela claimed that one of his daughters has an MBA and a second is an engineer.
Death
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela died on May 31, 2022 at the age of 83 at a prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina. The cause of death was lymphoma, according to a statement from the family.
