October 21, 2006
The Fall of the Cali Cartel
by
Ron Chepesiuk
U.S. justice was finally
served on Sept. 26, 2006 in a Miami court when the godfathers of the Cali
Cartel, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, and his brother Miguel, pled guilty to drug
trafficking and money laundering charges. The plea, which came after months of
intense negotiations with several U.S. agencies, marked the end of the largest
running and most important investigation in U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
history.
The 67-year-old Gilberto, known as the "Chess Player' for
his brilliance, and the 62-year-old Miguel, "El Senor" for his no-nonsense style
of criminal management, were the co-founders of Colombia's Cali Cartel,
history's biggest and most powerful drug-trafficking organization and arguably
its most significant organized crime syndicate. In the 1980s and early 1990s,
the brothers made billions of dollars building the cartel into the world's top
supplier of cocaine. Along the way, they destroyed thousands of lives in the
United States and other countries around the world distributing their poison. In
the process, the brothers revolutionized the way criminals did business, and in
1994, nearly turned Colombia into a narco-democracy by almost buying the
presidency with an illegal $6.2 million donation to the campaign of presidential
candidate Ernesto Samper, who was eventually elected.
It is no overstatement to say that Cali Cartel succeeded
in the drug trade and organized crime like no other criminal group before or
since. In the early 1990s, the cartel supplied more than 80 percent of the
cocaine smuggled in the United States, and was raking in between $5 and $7
billion annually, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Some of the recent big names in American organized crime –
Nicky Scarfo and John Gotti, for example – seem almost like street punks when
their criminal legacies are compared with that of the Rodriguez brothers.
Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellin Cartel, became
internationally famous and synonymous with the Colombian drug trade, but law
enforcement officials say it was the brothers Rodriguez who were the real kings
of cocaine. "Pablo Escobar and other Medellin Cartel godfathers are called the
Henry Fords of cocaine trafficking because they pioneered the transportation
routes that got the product to the market," explained Lou Weiss, a DEA agent who
investigated the Cali Cartel. "We need to go one step further with the Cali
Cartel and call it the McDonald's of cocaine trafficking because its godfathers
turned drug trafficking into a major corporate enterprise."
Named for the fair Colombian city of Cali (population 2
million), the Cali Cartel's success can be attributed largely to the cartel's
style of operation and its innovative approach to how it pursued
criminality. The Cali Cartel started in the early 1970s as small-time marijuana
traffickers, but soon switched to trafficking the more profitable cocaine. As
the cartel built its organization in the 1980s, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers
and their associates were willing to let their chief rival from Medellin, a city
200 hundred miles to the south, assume the high profile in the Colombian drug
trade. Under the leadership of the notorious Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel
grabbed the headlines, became household names in Colombia, tried to become part
of the political establishment and eventually went to war with the state, a
vicious clash that spawned a new term in the political lexicon—"narco-terrorism."
Between mid-August and mid-December of 1989, Escobar and
the Medellin Cartel killed 107 officials and civilians, carried out 205
bombings, and caused over $500 million in damages. In 1988 Escobar was
responsible for placing a bomb aboard a Colombian airliner that exploded and
killed 107 people. Sources revealed to the author in the researching of his
book,
Drug Lords: the Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel, that the shocking
incident happened because Escobar wanted to kill a girlfriend of Miguel
Rodriguez Orejuela, who was aboard the plane, in revenge for a Cali Cartel bomb
blast that partially deafened Escobar's daughter.
"The Colombian government hunted down and killed Pablo
Escobar because he was a terrorist, not a drug trafficker," explained Mark Eiler,
a DEA intelligence analyst and expert on Colombia. "If he had been smart enough
to contain his psychopathic tendencies, he might still be alive today and doing
well."
After the biggest manhunt in gangster history, Escobar was
discovered to be hiding in an apartment in Medellin, Colombia, on Aug. 2, 1993.
A shootout ensued and Escobar was gunned down trying to escape via the rooftop
of the apartment. At the end, Escobar had just one bodyguard with him, who also
went down in a hail of bullets.
The Cali Cartel, on the other hand, adopted a more
business-like approach and went about building its criminal empire quietly,
downplaying violence and terror as the principle means of achieving its
objective. It's not that the Cali Cartel eschewed violence; it could be as
vicious as the next group of gangsters when it needed to be.
Take, for instance, the Cali Cartel godfather Henry Loiaza,
the so-called "Scorpion." Described as the cartel's "Minister of War," Loiaza
was in reality a ruthless killer who once directed his underlings to use their
chain saws to carve up 100 people suspected of being union sympathizers. A few
days after Tiberio Jesus Hernandez, a local Catholic priest, complained of the
atrocities, his decapitated body was found floating in the Cauca River.
Despite such blood-curdling incidents, the Cali Cartel
preferred to offer the bribe, gather intelligence information on its enemies,
and use the latest in telecommunications technology to coordinate its
activities. The cartel's intelligence system rivaled those employed by many
governments. The cartel was also a pioneer in the criminal world in its use of
faxes, beepers, cell phones, pay phones, encryption, and computer information
systems.
To give one example: On May 18, 1994, the Colombian
authorities raided the offices of Jose Santacruz Londono, an associate of the
Rodriguez brothers, and confiscated an IBM AS/400 computer worth a $1 million.
To this date, the super computer is the most sophisticated piece of technology
ever taken from drug traffickers. It took the DEA's computer experts several
months to break into it.
What the DEA found was mind boggling: computer files
containing information on thousands of bribes the cartel paid to Colombians from
all sectors of society, as well as Colombia's entire motor vehicle records. "If
you were a Colombian and wanted a U.S. visa, you might call the U.S. Embassy in
Bogota once or perhaps twice for information," explained Steve Casto, a DEA
intelligence agent who did analysis on the cartel's super computer. "But what if
you were an informant and calling once or twice a month? The Cali Cartel would
find this pattern by analyzing the telephone records. Then the cartel would
wiretap the calls that person was making to the U.S. Embassy."
And so at the height of its power in the early 1990s, the
Cali Cartel was running its criminal empire more on the model of a multinational
corporation than a criminal enterprise. It treated its members like company
employees, hired the best person for the job, used business strategy to market
its illegal product, and shifted operations from one locale to another as
economic and political conditions necessitated.
The godfathers from the Cali Cartel did not kill leading
citizens of the state as the Medellin Cartel did nor engage in narco-terrorism.
So for nearly two decades, the Colombian government and its U.S. ally focused on
Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, a strategy that allowed the Cali Cartel the
space to grow its criminal enterprise. Consequently, the cartel was able to
dominate the cocaine market by the early 1990s.
The Cali Cartel's low-key style helped it build extensive
distribution networks right under the noses of international law enforcement,
giving the cartel an initial advantage against its adversary. Even when law
enforcement discovered the cartel's existence in the mid-1980s and what it was
doing within their communities, it was extremely difficult for the authorities
to penetrate and disrupt it. The cartel operated with the compartmentalization
of a terrorist organization, while its associates were willing to go to jail,
fearing what could happen to them and their families if they informed. Besides,
they knew that the cartel would take care of their families while they were in
jail.
By the early 1990s, the Cali Cartel had become a crime
multinational too huge to ignore. After Escobar was killed in 1993, the Cali
Cartel became drug enforcement's No. 1 target. By now it had a global reach and
thousands of employees and was involved in every aspect of the drug trade. It
had forged alliances with Italian, Russian, Mexican, British, Japanese and other
drug traffickers, helping to spawn the emergence of transnational crime as a
major threat to the global community.
The downfall of the Cali Cartel was in many ways a
creation of its own success. Like any well-run multi-national corporation, the
cartel kept meticulous records of its business activities, including personnel
matters. New employees were required to fill out application forms. Employees
got holidays and were paid bonuses. This paper trail would assist law
enforcement in tracking the cartel's operations.
Authorities began to discern the smuggling routes and
began making arrests in Colombia, the United States, Latin America, and Europe.
With the arrests, the cartel's cell structure began to break down, and some of
those arrested – despite their well-placed fear – began to become informants.
As law enforcement successfully investigated the cartel's
operations, the cartel found it increasingly difficult to hire the talent it
needed to fill the ranks of its depleted managerial pool.
It didn't help the cartel either that the wrong "CEO" was
running affairs at the most critical juncture in its development. Miguel
Rodriguez, who took over the cartel's day-to-day management about 1990, was a
micro-manager who couldn't seem to let go of business matters or know how to
delegate responsibility.
Micro-managing affairs in the United States and Europe
from headquarters in Cali could work early in its history when the cartel was
small and law enforcement had little inkling about its activities, but not when
it became the size of an IBM or General Motors. In fact, Miguel's micro-managing
style became a liability. Imagine the CEO of an IBM or a General Motors, based
in New York City, directly trying to oversee business operations in its chief
market, Colombia. Sooner or later, communication is bound to break down.
By 1995, the Colombian government assigned 500 soldiers
and police to a unit known as Search Block, with the sole responsibility of
tracking and taking down the Rodriguez brothers and their key subordinates. The
government also announced a reward of $1.6 million for information leading to
the capture of Gilberto and Miguel.
Finally, Gilberto was captured on June 9, 1995. He was
found hiding in an upscale apartment in Cali. As the authorities made the
arrest, the terrified Gilberto exclaimed: "Don't shoot. I'm a man of peace."
Miguel proved to be more elusive, even after Jorge Salcedo,
the Cali cartel's chief of security, turned informant. The brothers suspected a
mole and Salcedo was in great danger. Still, he provided the DEA with more
information on Miguel's hiding place. On Aug. 15, 1995, the authorities nabbed
Miguel before he could escape to a special hiding place behind a five-door file
cabinet built into the apartment wall. Miguel was in his boxer shorts, barely
awake. Salcedo was whisked out of Colombia to the United States, where he was
given the $1.6 million reward and put in the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Gilberto was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Miguel
earned 24. Because Colombian law forbids extradition of any prisoners for crimes
committed before Dec. 16, 1997, the brothers were safe from being sent to the
United States.
Miguel and Gilberto could easily have been free in a
matter of years. Under Colombian law, both would have been eligible to have his
sentence reduced for good behavior. In fact, Gilberto was released only five
years later, in November of 2002, but not for long. The Colombian government
scurried to press new charges against him; less than four months later Gilberto
was arrested for allegedly being involved with the trafficking of 330 pounds of
cocaine to the United States from Costa Rica.
Being in prison did not stop the brothers from running
their cartel. U.S. authorities began receiving information they were still
trafficking cocaine. In one 1997 smuggling operation, U.S. Customs and FBI
agents discovered a 2,400-pound cocaine shipment inside supposedly empty
chlorine gas cylinders in the port of Houston. Miguel made the mistake of
confiding in his personal secretary in prison that the load belonged to his
brother Gilberto.
In 2003, Alvaro Uribe, after winning the Colombian
presidency, vowed he would make good on a campaign pledge to begin extraditing
drug traffickers to the United States. The brothers Rodriguez were finally
extradited to the United States on Dec. 6, 2004 (Gilberto) and March 15, 2005
(Miguel).
On Sept. 27, 2006, Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela
pled guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to import cocaine to the United
States. Each was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The brothers also agreed to
forfeit a staggering $2.1 billion in drug trafficking assets, but many sources
believed that amount is just a fraction of their total wealth. As part of their
plea deal, the brothers spared their relatives in Colombia from prosecution on
money laundering charges and obstruction of justice.
International law enforcement's investigation of the Cali
Cartel provided a wise lesson for other international drug traffickers; namely,
becoming too big and complex an organization will make a drug trafficking
organization more vulnerable to a takedown. A radically different type of drug
trafficking organization has evolved, especially in Colombia. In place of the
huge drug trafficking organization that the Cali Cartel represented, with its
thousands of employees, a global reach of a multinational corporation, large
scale shipments of illegal drugs, and Fortune 500-like revenues of $5 to $7
billion annually, are the so-called cartelitos or baby cartels. The
cartelitos try to operate as discretely as the Cali Cartel did, but do not
rely on the sophisticated organizational structure and communications systems
that the cartel employed.
"Today's cartelitos have learned from the past," explained
Pedro M. Guzman, a DEA special agent who was based in Bogota, Colombia. "The
Cali Cartel has relied on the cell phone to manage its day-to-day business
activities. Today's criminals are using the Internet and other state-of-the-art
technology and push to talk radios as their main means of communication.
Colombian traffickers sell directly to the Mexicans so the U.S. won't be able to
make extradition cases against them, no matter where the cocaine ends up. They
like to have face to face meetings, which obviously alleviates the need for
micro managing and the constant need to monitor cell phones in the U.S."
As the Cali Cartel godfathers begin to spend the rest of
their lives in a U.S. prison, one thing remains certain: The international drug
trade is thriving. For the criminal entrepreneurs who smuggle its illicit
products, it continues to be business as usual, just in a different operational
structure. Today cocaine is just one of many drugs, along with meth, heroin,
ecstasy, and marijuana, that is trafficked by organized crime. During the past
two decades there has been no significant change in the price of a kilo of
cocaine, indicating that supplies are both plentiful and stable
Ron Chepesiuk, a South Carolina-based freelance
journalist is author of
Drug Lords: The Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel.
(See www.ronchepesiuk.com). In January 2007, Barricade Books will publish
his next book,
Gangsters of Harlem: The Gritty Underworld of New York City's
Most Famous Neighborhood. (See www.gangstersofharlem.com).
