Extradition Action to Begin for Ex-DEA Agent

Extradition proceedings aimed at returning former narcotics agent Darnell Garcia to Los Angeles, where he faces felony charges in a major corruption scandal within the Drug Enforcement Administration, were to begin today in Luxembourg.

The 42-year-old Rancho Palos Verdes man was arrested and imprisoned last July in the tiny European nation after a seven-month international manhunt.

Garcia and two other former DEA agents who, like Garcia, were assigned to the agency’s Los Angeles office, were named in a 42-count felony indictment alleging they participated in a drug trafficking and money-laundering scheme.

But under an extradition treaty between the United States and Luxembourg, it appears that Garcia would face only six of those charges if he were extradited.

Taking into account the 105-year-old extradition treaty, Luxembourg’s first deputy attorney general, Jean-Pierre Klopp, argued that Garcia should be extradited on felony charges alleging possession and distribution of cocaine and heroin; theft of heroin; money-laundering, and providing DEA intelligence information to suspected drug traffickers.

Klopp, in a 14-page pleading filed Jan. 15 with a Luxembourg federal court, underscored that both countries are stepping up drug enforcement “in the face of the ever-increasing danger of drug use and drug trafficking. . . .”

Additionally, Luxembourg’s parliament, to the consternation of many bankers, passed a tough money-laundering law last July. Historically, Luxembourg, like Switzerland, has had strict bank secrecy laws. Klopp argued, in effect, that the new law was not being used retroactively against Garcia because it was an outgrowth of older sanctions controlling drug trafficking.

Several other counts from the American indictment--including tax evasion and currency violations--are not included as grounds for Garcia’s extradition, because they are not in the treaty.

Garcia has been incarcerated for about six months in a Luxembourg prison on a charge of traveling on a false passport. That sentence was completed in December, but he remains in custody pending the outcome of the extradition proceeding.

U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter has set a trial date of April 17 in federal court in Los Angeles for Garcia and the other four defendants: former DEA agents John Jackson, 40, of Claremont, and Wayne Countryman, 46, of Walnut; Jackson’s wife, Barbara, 41; and Jackson’s former business partner, Sherman Lair, 39, of Alta Loma.

A sensational--and embarrassing--chain of events from the start, the case partly turns on suspected thefts, beginning in 1984, of more than five pounds of Asian heroin--with an estimated street value of $7.5 million--from the DEA’s safe in Los Angeles.

Garcia, Jackson and Countryman were charged in a 1988 U.S. indictment with participating in a massive drug theft, trafficking and money-laundering scheme.

Moreover, the indictment charged that Garcia provided DEA intelligence information to known drug dealers and “hid from federal agents” two suspected drug traffickers in a Bunker Hill Towers apartment Garcia rented.

The DEA career of Garcia, an international karate champion, was cloaked in controversy.

At one point, Garcia, who is black and Puerto Rican, claimed discrimination on the basis of national origin when the DEA fired him for refusing a transfer to Detroit. He won reinstatement in a federal appellate decision in 1986.

About two months later, the DEA placed him on administrative leave while it mounted its investigation into the drug thefts. As a result, say some close to Garcia, the former drug agent feels he has been the target of a DEA vendetta.

In a declaration filed in federal court in Los Angeles in November, John Anderson, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service, noted that Luxembourg officials recently blocked “approximately $3 million” in funds belonging to Garcia.

“These funds were hidden in accounts in the name of shell corporations set up by Garcia’s wife, Adaline Bridgette Garcia, and another friend,” he said in the declaration without identifying the friend.

Anderson alleged that “the most likely source” of Garcia’s foreign bank funds “is narcotics trafficking. Our investigation has not revealed any other plausible source of funds that could account for (the) deposits . . . .”

Last October, Garcia’s wife and another woman, Maria Angie Zuniga of Monterey Park, were jailed in Luxembourg for about three weeks while money-laundering charges were investigated. Upon their release, Garcia’s wife returned to Los Angeles. Zuniga remains in Luxembourg.

Similar allegations were leveled at Garcia’s Luxembourg attorney, but he was not arrested. Since then, Garcia has hired a new extradition attorney.