Huge Probe Nets Top Dealers, 9 Tons of Cocaine

Federal authorities announced Wednesday that they have arrested three of Colombia’s top cocaine traffickers and seized more than nine tons of the drug in a three-year-long undercover investigation described as the largest in the nation’s history.

The operation, which resulted in the breakup of two massive drug rings and a total of nearly 400 arrests, was undertaken with the help of government officials in Panama, which provided headquarters for a large-scale undercover money-laundering operation that led to the arrests.

“This is the largest and most successful undercover investigation in federal drug enforcement history. The results are unprecedented,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said at a Los Angeles news conference announcing the probe called “Operation Pisces.”

Through a carefully concealed international financial network run by undercover U.S. agents, federal authorities say they were able to make contact with some of Colombia’s top cocaine distributors in a way never before attempted.

Highly Publicized Seizures

“This is the first time we’ve ever been at this level in Drug Enforcement Administration history. We’ve never been able to penetrate this far,” said Tony Ricevuto, the agent who headed the operation.

Local police departments across the country over the last several months made a series of highly publicized seizures of cash and drugs--including a record 1,900 pounds seized by the Los Angeles Police Department in March--while federal agents who helped engineer the seizures maintained their undercover financial relationship with drug distributors, Ricevuto said.

“Here in L.A. alone we (seized) over $19 million” of the money secretly laundered by federal agents, he said.

Panama Atty. Gen. Augusto Vallalez said the operation, which depended on Panamanian bank accounts to launder money, was the first major test of Panama’s new laws lifting traditional bank secrecy provisions.

U.S. officials in recent months have been increasingly critical of Panama’s alleged failure to cooperate in fighting drugs, but Vallalez said the operation is proof of the country’s efforts to crack down on the millions of dollars in drug profits that have flowed through the country.

“Panama is willing to cooperate, due to its new legislation, with any organization that wishes to fight drug trafficking,” Vallalez said. “Operation Pisces is proof of what we’ve been doing. In Panama, we don’t talk, we do. We act.”

Major Financial Links

Among about 50 narcotics suspects arrested Wednesday were three Colombian nationals described as major financial links in the Colombian cocaine network who provided U.S. undercover agents contacts with major cocaine distributors.

Jose Auli Lopez-Chacon, 37, Anibal Zapata, 41, and Jacobo Wasserman, 46, were arrested in Miami as they arrived on flights from Colombia at the request of undercover agents.

“We just asked them to come to the United States, and they did. Believe it or not,” Ricevuto said.

The operation also resulted in the seizure of more than $49 million in assets from drug distributors, including an $800,000 helicopter and 15 airplanes.

“This point is especially worth noting. A drug cartel might survive the indictment and conviction of its leaders, but it cannot survive a substantial loss in its assets,” Meese said.

Much of the proceeds of the operation will be distributed to local law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, which participated in the probe.

The Los Angeles Police Department, which assigned 70 agents to the probe, received a check Wednesday for $96,223. The Torrance Police Department received $83,205.

“This is clearly the most remarkable large-scale operation in the history of the U.S. in terms of dealing with drugs,” said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who was joined with police chiefs from nine Southern California agencies that participated in the operation.

“But we have not even made the slightest dent in the amount of cocaine that’s coming in,” Reiner said, noting that the wholesale price of cocaine in Los Angeles has dropped from $60,000 to $20,000 a kilogram since Operation Pisces was launched in 1984.

“That means that supply is going up, up, up,” Reiner said.