Drug Trial of Businessman Goes to Jury

A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday began deliberating the fate of a wealthy Honduran businessman described as “a narcotics trafficker of incredible magnitude” by federal prosecutors, but defended as an “innocent victim” of the anti-drug war by his lawyer.

During a four-week trial in U.S. District Court here, assistant U.S. Attys. Jimmy Gurule and Manuel Medrano described Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, 45, as the kingpin of a major Van Nuys cocaine ring that generated $73 million in illicit proceeds in 1981.

Medrano said in his closing argument Monday that Matta was the overlord of the operation even though he never set foot in the Oakwood Gardens apartment complex where the drugs were stored and distributed and where payments were collected.

The government’s key witness was Hector Barona Becerra, a one-time Colombian cocaine transporter who said he flew drugs for Matta in 1981 after meeting him in the Colombian city of Cali. He said that Matta had been introduced to him as “Jose Campo” and by the nickname of “El Negro.”

Barona is now in the federal witness protection program. Matta’s defense lawyer, Martin Stolar, cross-examined Barona for more than three days and outside the courtroom called him “a liar.” Stolar spent about half of his two-hour closing argument Tuesday attacking Barona. “Mr. Matta is an innocent man. Mr. Barona is guilty one hundred times over,” he asserted.

To buttress Barona’s testimony, prosecutors called witnesses to discuss ledgers, telephone records, telephone books and other things that were seized at the Van Nuys apartment complex in a Sept. 24, 1981, raid that netted $1.9 million in cash and 114 pounds of cocaine, at the time the largest seizure in Los Angeles history.

One of the government witnesses said that a telephone number traced to a Cali investment company owned by Matta’s wife was listed under the name “Negro” in one of the co-conspirator’s telephone books in Van Nuys.

The ledger books, Medrano stressed Monday, showed that one of “El Negro’s” accomplices collected $22 million on his behalf at the Van Nuys complex. Medrano frequently pointed to Matta, wearing a double-breasted charcoal gray suit and a red tie, and referred to him as “El Negro” during his argument.

Stolar retorted that “El Negro” is a term frequently used in Central and South American countries to refer to a wide variety of people. To support this contention, he called to the stand as his final witness Hortensia Torres-Comas, a Spanish-language translation specialist who lives in Long Beach. She said the term was “incredibly common” and sometimes used as a term of endearment.

Stolar also asserted that ledgers and phone records did not clearly link the Van Nuys operation to Matta. And at one point, he put one of the ledgers on the podium and asked it rhetorically, “Who is El Negro?”

In 1982, five individuals pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the Van Nuys raid, another was convicted after a trial and a seventh man fled and is still a fugitive. Matta was arrested under unusual circumstances in Honduras in April, 1988, by a combination of Honduran soldiers and U.S. marshals. Honduras has no extradition treaty with the United States and riots over his arrest ensued in Tegucigalpa, the capital.

Stolar claimed that his client, whom he continually refers to as “a legitimate businessman,” was kidnaped and brought to the United States illegally but lost several bids to have the arrest voided. Matta also faces separate federal drug trafficking charges here, in San Diego and in Phoenix.