Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

January 30, 2018 By Fausta

El Chapo promises to not kill jurors

It’s jailbird Tuesday!

“That’s a great jury you put together“?

Notorious drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán promises he won’t kill any jurors seated in his upcoming federal court trial, arguing it’s therefore unnecessary to keep them anonymous and under armed guard as prosecutors have asked.

HOW WEST SIDE BUST LED THE FEDS TO ‘EL CHAPO’. STREET-LEVEL DEAL SPARKED PROBE OF WORLD’S NO. 1 DRUG KINGPIN, INTERVIEWS, RECORDS SHOW

Authorities have never revealed that the case against the man who some believe was the biggest drug kingpin in the world began with Baines, a mid-level dealer whose father owned a grocery store in Austin and also drove a bus for the CTA.

But a Sun-Times review of court records and interviews with Baines and others involved in the case, including a key former federal prosecutor, has found that a Drug Enforcement Administration task force used a web of informants and hundreds of wiretapped calls to trace a path that ultimately led from Baines to El Chapo.

“We went from the streets of Chicago to the mountaintops of Mexico,” says Thomas Shakeshaft, a former assistant U.S. attorney who supervised each phase of the investigation. “We started a case against the Traveling Vice Lords on the West Side of Chicago and went all the way up.

“Before Sean Penn flew down to Mexico with [actress] Kate del Castillo and recorded this thing where Chapo admitted he was the largest drug-trafficker in the world, we had the only legally admissible voice recording of Chapo in the world.”

Video,

There are even Breaking Bad-like identical twins*,  Pedro “Peter” Flores and Margarito “Junior” Flores.

The twins agreed to cooperate with U.S. investigators in late 2008, court records show, and Pedro Flores recorded a damning phone conversation with his supplier — El Chapo. The recording became the key evidence in the 2009 federal indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Read the whole thing.

————————————————-

*Breaking Bad twins,

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Filed Under: cocaine, crime, Fausta's blog, Mexico Tagged With: Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, Junior Flores, Kate del Castillo, Peter Flores, Sean Penn

December 21, 2017 By Fausta

Obama administration allegedly covered up for Hezbollah in Latin America

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I have blogged about Hezbollah‘s inroads in our hemisphere for the last decade (for additional posts see also Hizballah Hizbollah).

Josh Meyer’s fascinating report, The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook, highlights the connections between the drug trade and terrorism:

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

And

The untold story of Project Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government agencies — and shifting priorities at the highest levels — can set back years of progress.

And while the pursuit may be shadowed in secrecy, from Latin American luxury hotels to car parks in Africa to the banks and battlefields of the Middle East, the impact is not: In this case, multi-ton loads of cocaine entering the United States, and hundreds of millions of dollars going to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization with vast reach.

What did the Obama administration do about it?

They killed a probe of the terror group to get the Iran deal (emphasis added)

After 9/11 the DEA launched investigations into Venezuelan crime syndicates, links between Colombian drug-traffickers and Lebanese money-launderers, and the “suspicious flow of thousands of used cars” from the U.S. to Benin, Mr. Meyer explains. The U.S. military was also investigating links between Iran and Shiite militias with improvised explosive devices that killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers. “All of these paths eventually converged on Hezbollah,” he writes.

By 2008 the DEA had “amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself” into a global crime syndicate “that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking and money laundering,” Mr. Meyer reports. DEA’s Project Cassandra was born to take down the Hezbollah operation by busting its “innermost circle.”

For instance,

Alleged Venezuelan drug kingpin Hugo Carvajal was arrested in Aruba in 2014. Venezuela’s close alliance with Iran is no secret and reeling in “the chicken,” as Carvajal was known, would have generated key intelligence about cocaine trafficking to the U.S. and North Africa. The Netherlands mysteriously intervened and returned him to Venezuela.

When Colombia arrested Walid Makled, a Syrian-born Venezuelan who was alleged to be shipping ten tons of cocaine to the U.S. each month, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos refused U.S. extradition requests and sent him to Venezuela. Mr. Obama repaid Mr. Santos by backing his amnesty for the FARC, the largest drug cartel in the Americas.

Additionally, (back to Meyer’s article),

As a result, some Hezbollah operatives were not pursued via arrests, indictments, or Treasury designations that would have blocked their access to U.S. financial markets, according to Bauer, a career Treasury official, who served briefly in its Office of Terrorist Financing as a senior policy adviser for Iran before leaving in late 2015. And other “Hezbollah facilitators”arrested in France, Colombia, Lithuania have not been extradited — or indicted — in the U.S., she wrote.

Billions of drug trade money funding terrorists. Tens of thousands of lives ruined. Read The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.

This warrants a most rigorous congressional investigation.

Related: “Venezuela looks like a failed economy. In fact, it’s Iran’s frontier in the Americas”

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, cocaine, Colombia, FARC, Fausta's blog, Hizballah, Hizbollah, Iran, Venezuela Tagged With: Ayman Joumaa, Hezbollah, Hugo Carvajal a.k.a. ""el Pollo, Walid Makled

April 18, 2017 By Fausta

Colombia’s new turf wars

The Guardian reports
Colombia’s armed groups sow seeds of new conflict as war with Farc ends.Last year’s deal with the guerrilla group left a power vacuum, putting authorities and residents on edge amid new violence: ‘Everyone’s nervous’

Across Colombia, new armed groups – and some long-established ones – are violently occupying the regions left behind by the Farc, all hoping to wrest control of the cocaine trade, illegal gold mines and other criminal enterprises which once financed the rebels.

The military promised to send out 65,000 of its soldiers to occupy and secure the regions and President Juan Manuel Santos announced last month that 960 new police agents would be assigned to rural areas.

But criminal groups have moved faster.

Fighting between a smaller rebel faction, the National Liberation Army, ELN, and the military branch of a criminal group known as the Urabeños has led to the forced displacement of nearly 1,000 people since the start of the year in the western region of Chocó. On 25 March, five community members of one town in that area were gunned down, though it is unclear by which side.

Related:

Are Crime Groups Behind Colombia Coca Eradication Protests?

Meanwhile, the country’s economy slows down,

Las consecuencias del Gbno van llegando; preparemos el cambio de rumbo pic.twitter.com/ACw0dXw5WL

— Álvaro Uribe Vélez (@AlvaroUribeVel) April 18, 2017

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Filed Under: cocaine, Colombia, crime, Fausta's blog Tagged With: ELN

March 31, 2017 By Fausta

Mexico: State attorney general arrested, at the border, on drug charges

Like something out of Breaking Bad, only adding cocaine and heroin, the top law enforcement official in the state of Nayarit, busted on drug charges:

Mexican state attorney general arrested at U.S. border in San Diego on drug trafficking charges

Federal agents in San Diego have arrested the attorney general for the Mexican state of Nayarit on charges that he conspired to smuggle heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into the U.S.

Edgar Veytia, 46, was detained Monday at the U.S. border in San Diego on an indictment handed down by a grand jury in New York, Ralph DeSio, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Wednesday.

The indictment was filed March 2 in the Eastern District of New York — the same jurisdiction where federal prosecutors have charged Sinaloa cartel commander Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — and a U.S. magistrate judge in Brooklyn unsealed the charging papers on Tuesday.

Veytia allegedly was affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, and went by several aliases, including Diablo (Devil).

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Filed Under: cocaine, crime, Fausta's blog, Mexico Tagged With: Edgar Veytia, Sinaloa Cartel

March 13, 2017 By Fausta

Colombia: Coca production continues to rise

I was posting about this in July last year, and even then it was a two-year trend:

While the FARC peace travesty rolls right along, coca cultivation has surged over the past two years as growers are offered greater incentives at lower risk.

This was known even while Obama was helping Santos-FARC coalition takeovr Col.
Coca Cultivation Soars in Colombia https://t.co/lJEf8w23o3

— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) March 13, 2017

Now the Acreage under coca cultivation set to surpass levels before a U.S.-sponsored eradication program began (emphasis added),

The surge in the coca crop has come since 2013, as the U.S. was forced to reduce and ultimately end spraying from crop dusters because of health concerns over the use of a toxic defoliant and the Colombian government’s worries that the program was turning many rural residents against the state as it was negotiating a peace deal with Marxist rebels. On Tuesday, U.S. officials in Washington are expected to announce that coca is planted on about 695 square miles of land, or more than 10 times the area of the District of Columbia. The increase continues a rise in which planted acreage has more than doubled since its lowest point in 2012.

A year ago I also posted that Hezbollah was teaming up with Colombian cocaine lords due to Iran’s falling oil revenues.

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Filed Under: cocaine, Colombia, crime, drugs, Fausta's blog

January 31, 2017 By Fausta

Argentina to stop foreigners with criminal records from entering the country

Op-ed in Spain’s El País:

Argentina adopts anti-immigrant rhetoric over public safety fears. Macri administration pledges to stop foreigners with criminal records from entering the country

Argentina’s foreign population is 4.5%, and foreign inmates serving time represent 6% of the prison population. The figures do not look alarming. Yet the government is providing another set of data that focuses on federal penitentiaries, and points to foreigners as being responsible for the most serious crimes, particularly drug trafficking.

“The foreign national population in the custody of the Federal Penitentiary Service has grown over the last years to reach 21.35% of the total prison population in 2016. In crimes linked to drugs, 33% of the people in the custody of the Federal Penitentiary Service are foreigners.”

The op-ed talks of Argentina as an open country. It does not mention that the drug cartels have taken notice.

Last year the WSJ reported that Argentina is becoming an international narcotics hub as cocaine traffickers have been flying south into Argentina from Bolivia:

Argentina doesn’t produce cocaine, but its porous borders, roads, rivers and ports make it a good transit point. Low chances of prosecution also attract drug dealers, says Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s security minister.

Since 1999, Argentina has successfully prosecuted only seven money-laundering cases, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest international narcotics report. That record has inspired traffickers from Colombia, Peru and Mexico to buy luxury homes and farmland—which can accommodate clandestine airstrips—to evade tougher controls farther north in South America and secure profitable southern supply routes, officials say.

As you may recall, back in 2008 I posted on how Mexican drug cartels can use Argentina as an entry (ephedrine/pseudoephedrine) and exit (cocaine) point, as the country became a hub for U.S. methamphetamine and European cocaine. By 2013, Argentina was believed to supply 70 tons of cocaine a year to Europe, a third of its annual consumption.



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Filed Under: Argentina, cocaine, crime, drugs, Fausta's blog, immigration Tagged With: Ibar Pérez Corradi

November 21, 2016 By Fausta

Venezuela: Maduro’s nephews guilty of drug charges

The nephews of Nicolás Maduro’s wife Cilia, Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, 30 years old, and “Franqui” Francisco Flores de Freitas, 31 years old, were found guilty of guilty of trying to ship 800 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S. by a federal grand jury last Friday.

Venezuelan President’s Nephews Found Guilty on Drug Charges. Relatives of Nicolás Maduro were convicted of trying to ship 800 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S.

After less than two weeks of testimony, the jury of seven women and five men deliberated for approximately six hours to reach the guilty verdict.

Prosecutors say the nephews were planning to send planes loaded with cocaine from Venezuela to Honduras, with the U.S. as the ultimate destination, in hopes of receiving tens of millions of dollars in profit. They were arrested last year by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Haiti, a few days before the first shipment was due to take place.

Interestingly, the defense team was led by

white-shoe law firms Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP and Sidley Austin LLP

Commenter Gringo reminds us

Michelle and Barack Obama met each other while working at Sidley Austin. Bernadine Dohrn, Weatherperson and the wife of Bill Ayers, also worked at Sidley Austin.

Boies Schiller charges $1,000+/hour to criminals with very deep pockets. The nephews’ jury took only six hours to reach a verdict. They now face a maximum of life in prison.

Related:
Military and Police Corruption: Venezuela’s Growing Evil

Venezuela, a failing state

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Filed Under: cocaine, corruption, crime, drugs, Fausta's blog, Venezuela Tagged With: Efraín Antonio Campo Flores, Francisco Flores de Freitas, Nicolas Maduro

November 17, 2016 By Fausta

Venezuela: The nephews shipped drugs from the presidential hangar

The drug trial of Eduardo Campos and Efraín Antonio Campo Flores, nephews of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, revealed that cocaine was shipped to Honduras from the presidential hangar at Caracas’ international airport:

One of the nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, on trial for plotting to smuggle cocaine into the United States, promised that the cocaine would arrive before dark in Honduras because the plane carrying it would be departing from the presidential hangar at Caracas’ international airport, according to a recording played Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.

“I have control,” Francisco Flores can be heard saying. He refers to the drugs as “merchandise.”

Not only was there a recording, there were two witnesses,

Prosecutors also called to the stand an air traffic controller who said he helped devise the plan for the drugs allegedly to arrive in Honduras, where they were to be unloaded and transported to Mexico to be shipped to the United States. More testimony came from another confidential informant, who said he was at the meeting where Flores confirmed the plan.

The route, then, is Venezuela-Honduras-Mexico-US. Go to the article for details.

Closing arguments are scheduled to start today.

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Filed Under: cocaine, crime, drugs, Fausta's blog, Venezuela Tagged With: Cilia Flores, Eduardo Campos, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores

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