Chauffeur Accused of Selling Drug From Car of Norway’s U.N. Envoy
Federal drug agents arrested the chauffeur of the Norwegian ambassador to the United Nations on Monday and charged that he sold cocaine by the pound from the ambassador’s official car.
The driver was arrested with two other men in the 1986 Lincoln Continental as he was delivering a pound of cocaine to undercover agents, authorities said.
The men are not covered by diplomatic immunity, Robert Strang of the Drug Enforcement Administration said. He said that the ambassador, Tom Vraalsen, and his staff were not involved in the affair.
Vraalsen was off duty Monday and no other official was available to comment, Vraalsen’s secretary, Grete Ranberg, said.
“He won’t be happy,” she said. She added that the chauffeur had been with the mission since before she started work there in 1982.
Strang said that the arrests followed a six-month undercover operation in which federal agents posed as drug dealers and bought first an ounce of cocaine from the chauffeur, Rolando A. Vicerra, 35, of Queens, and then a pound of the drug, at a wholesale price of $10,000.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
