Drug Cartel Leader Found Guilty of Laundering Money

Jesus Anibal Zapata, described by U.S. officials as a “ringleader” in the notorious Medellin cocaine cartel, was convicted in Los Angeles federal court Friday on charges of laundering more than $45 million in drug proceeds for the cartel.

Zapata, who oversaw money-laundering operations for cartel chief Pablo Emilio Escobar’s huge Colombian cocaine organization, is the first to be convicted in Southern California under a tough, new federal drug kingpin statute that carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Zapata, 42, was snared by federal agents during a massive, 2-year undercover money-laundering investigation known as Operation Pisces, a probe that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III has described as “the largest and most successful undercover investigation in federal drug enforcement history.”

Zapata, who allegedly reported directly to Escobar in Medellin, Colombia, oversaw a network of employees in Los Angeles, New York and Miami who collected millions of dollars in cocaine revenues and funneled the money back to Colombia through a variety of elaborate wire transfers and bank transactions, authorities said.

U.S. officials credited the Panamanian government both with helping trace millions of dollars in cartel assets through Panama bank accounts and with aiding in Zapata’s arrest.

Zapata was arrested on May 6, 1987--the day U.S. officials went public with the Operation Pisces investigation--after Panama officials expelled him and forced him onto a plane bound for Miami.

Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian military chief who is under indictment in the United States for allegedly aiding drug traffickers, was not involved in the investigation.

“The Panamanian officials we were dealing with were sincerely cooperative,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Russell Hayman said. “They had information. They could have breached security, and they didn’t.”

Zapata was one of the most important traffickers snagged in the 3-year, undercover investigation, during which Drug Enforcement Administration agents posed as money launderers and took on top-level cocaine traffickers as clients.

The investigation resulted in seizures of $270 million in cocaine and more than 350 arrests between 1985 and 1987.

Zapata, a resident of Medellin, was convicted of 14 counts of conspiracy, possession of cocaine, money laundering and the most important--acting as a “principal administrator” of a continuing criminal narcotics enterprise.

In order to obtain a conviction under the 1986 statute, prosecutors must prove that an enterprise has done business of at least $10 million a year or handled cocaine quantities in excess of 150 kilograms. A conviction carries a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole.

Hayman said Zapata’s conviction under the statute is believed to be only the second or third in the nation.

U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi issued the verdict Friday after a 6-week, non-jury trial last November.

Zapata’s lawyer did not return phone calls to comment on the verdict.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Zapata’s employees gathered about $25 million in drug proceeds in Los Angeles during a 2-year period and funneled it, with the help of undercover DEA agents, to Panama bank accounts.

An additional $20 million was laundered for the organization out of New York and Miami, Hayman said. An additional $25 million was seized by law enforcement officials during the course of the investigation.

In addition to several face-to-face meetings with Zapata in Los Angeles, investigating agents were later able to trace much of the laundered money through Panamanian bank accounts with the aid of Panama’s 1986 anti-secrecy financial law.

But the trail, from there, proved impossible to follow.

“They show the money going out of the accounts in Panama . . . but then the money goes to, say, an account in Colombia, and that’s as far as we can get,” Hayman said.

“The money just gets wired all over the place. They do 10 wire transfers in 20 days, and at a certain point, it becomes impractical to continue to try to trace the money.

“We knew ultimately where the money was going: . . . He was working for Pablo Escobar.”

Escobar, who has been described as the richest man in the world, heads the largest of the Medellin cocaine trafficking organizations. The cartel is believed responsible for 80% of all the cocaine shipped into the United States.

Zapata was the last of 13 members of his organization to be convicted in Los Angeles.