Matta Gets Life Term for Running Drug Syndicate : Narcotics: Wealthy businessman seized in Honduras won’t be eligible for parole, Los Angeles judge decides.

A wealthy Honduran businessman, described by prosecutors as one of the world’s most significant narcotics traffickers, was sentenced by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for running a major cocaine syndicate.

Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros “is on the level of Colombian drug cartel leaders” and former Colombian drug kingpin Carlos Lehder, who is now in federal prison in Illinois, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano, who prosecuted the case.

In a sentencing memorandum given to U.S. District Judge Pamela A. Rymer, prosecutors called Matta “perhaps the most significant narcotics trafficker in custody in the world to date.”

Matta, 45, was convicted by a jury here last Sept. 6. The case stemmed from a 1981 raid in which U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized 114 pounds of cocaine and $1.9 million at a Van Nuys apartment complex--at the time the largest cocaine seizure in Los Angeles history.

John Zienter, the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles office, lauded the sentence. “We finally have struck a tremendous blow in our war on drugs,” Zienter said.

James P. Walsh Jr., who heads the U.S. attorney’s major narcotics section in Los Angeles, called the sentencing “very significant” even though the amount of drugs involved in the case was dwarfed by last year’s seizure of 21 tons of cocaine in a Sylmar warehouse. Walsh noted that suspects arrested in the Sylmar case did not appear to be the heads of a drug syndicate.

Matta is the third person in Los Angeles to be sentenced to life without possibility of parole for running continuing criminal enterprises.

Matta was convicted even though he had not set foot in the United States while the drug ring was operating.

Judge Rymer said Matta’s organization had been “very complex,” generating $73 million in drug proceeds in a nine-month period and that Matta himself received $22 million of that money.

“For that kind of conduct, Congress has enacted an enhanced sentence of up to life,” Rymer said. “I can’t imagine what that was for if not for this.”

Matta’s defense lawyer, Martin Stolar, said his client would appeal. “The man should not be here in the first place,” Stolar said, referring to the controversial nature of Matta’s arrest in Honduras in April, 1988.

Matta was seized by U.S. and Honduran law enforcement officers and brought to the United States. The arrest triggered a riot in the capital of Honduras. The U.S. Embassy was burned, and five Hondurans died.

Stolar has unsuccessfully argued in three federal courts that Matta was illegally arrested and still has an appeal pending on that issue in a federal appeals court in Chicago.

Stolar paraphrased a famous 1928 quotation from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis to indicate his distaste for the nature of Matta’s arrest: “If the government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law.”

But Medrano said the charges against Matta’s having been illegally arrested and tortured were “baseless” and had been rejected by three federal judges.

Matta is now scheduled to go on trial here in April in another major drug case, in which he also faces the possibility of a life term without possibility of parole. Charges are also pending against him in federal courts in San Diego and Phoenix.

Matta, wearing a dark gray suit and a red print tie, remained calm during the lengthy hearing. He has been incarcerated at the federal penitentiary at Lompoc since July.

Matta’s wife, Nancy Vasquez, and two of his five children were present in the courtroom, as they frequently had been during the trial.

Before Rymer pronounced her sentence, Stolar read a statement from Matta in which he continued to proclaim his innocence.

“The jury issued a verdict of guilty based only on the testimony of a false witness paid by the government,” Matta said, referring to the testimony of the prosecution’s key witness, Hector Barona Becerra.

During the trial, Barona, now in the federal Witness Protection Program, identified himself as a former cocaine trafficker. He pointed at Matta in the courtroom and said he had flown narcotics for him in 1981, although he said he had been told at the time that the man who hired him was named “Jose Campos.”

Barona said he had met Matta in Cali, Colombia, and agreed to fly several loads of cocaine for him to Miami via the Bahamas.

Stolar cross-examined Barona for 3 1/2 days and spent half of his closing argument attempting unsuccessfully to undermine his credibility with the jury.

Besides Barona, the government presented several other witnesses and documentary evidence, including voluminous ledgers seized in the 1981 Van Nuys apartment raid and telephone records, including records of calls from the Van Nuys apartment complex to the office of a business owned by Matta’s wife in Cali.

Another key witness for the prosecution was DEA Agent Larry Lyons, who explained the ledgers and said the Van Nuys ring operated along the lines of “a classic Colombian cocaine cartel.”

The jury convicted Matta of one count of conspiracy, four counts of drug possession, one count of possession with intent to distribute and one count of running a continuing criminal enterprise. Rymer meted out the life sentence on the last count. She sentenced him to 15 years on all the other counts, to run concurrently with the life sentence.

However, her sentence provided that, if the conviction on the continuing criminal enterprise charge was overturned on appeal, the sentence on the five possession offenses would run consecutively, meaning a 75-year term. In effect, she merged the conspiracy count into the continuing criminal enterprise charge for purposes of sentencing.

Rymer also fined Matta $225,000.

Federal authorities have said that Matta was the key figure in influencing leading Colombian drug traffickers to shift their emphasis on importing cocaine into Los Angeles, rather than into Miami, after a major federal crackdown on cocaine sellers was launched there in the early 1980s.

Prosecutor Medrano argued that Matta, a one-time chemist, had become a billionaire through his drug enterprises, centered in Cali, one of Colombia’s major drug centers. Matta has contended, through his lawyer, that he is a wealthy, legitimate businessman with interests in cattle, tobacco and construction.

Matta did not testify during the trial.