30 Arrest Warrants Issued in U.S.-Mexico Drug Probe : Narcotics: Ring shipped more than 200 tons of cocaine into L.A. over two years, investigation shows.

In what Mexican and U.S. authorities said Tuesday marks a new era of cooperation, arrest warrants and indictments were issued for 30 suspects in a drug ring that allegedly moved more than 200 tons of cocaine to Los Angeles over a two-year period.

The ring was the subject of a sweeping investigation after the seizure in 1989 of 21 tons of cocaine in Sylmar, the largest cocaine bust ever in this country. The probe showed just how prodigious the ring’s supplies were from border areas, authorities said.

“Just about every Sunday, a truck left El Paso with five tons for L.A.,” said Travis Kuykendall, the agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in El Paso. A federal grand jury there this week indicted 20 people, charging them with conspiracy to distribute, possess and import cocaine.

Ten of the suspects also were charged with money laundering. Mexican authorities almost simultaneously issued arrest warrants for 21 suspects accused of possession, transportation and sale of cocaine and of smuggling. Eleven people are wanted in both countries.

The DEA said the evidence that led to the indictments came from 35 different searches conducted from Ciudad Juarez to Los Angeles.

The hunt began after police discovered the giant cache of cocaine--with an estimated street value of $6 billion--and more than $10 million in a nondescript warehouse in the San Fernando Valley on Sept. 28, 1989.

Despite the Sylmar bust, authorities have said they believe the smuggling ring continued to operate.

Authorities compiled a “mountain of evidence,” such as ledgers and computers containing detailed records of drug shipments seized in the searches that followed the Sylmar drug bust, Kuykendall said. “There was literally a building full of documentary evidence seized--ledgers, computers, just about anything you could think of,” he said of the material found in Sylmar and used for the latest indictments.

According to the indictments, the drug ring was headed by Rafael Munoz Talavera, a 39-year-old U.S. citizen born in El Paso.

Along with his Mexican brothers, Eduardo and Raul, and other members of the alleged ring, he is accused of receiving airborne shipments of cocaine at a ranch in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua.

DEA agents said Talavera moved from El Paso across the border to Juarez after the Sylmar seizure and had been living there openly on a ranch until he recently fled. His whereabouts and that of his two brothers are unknown.

The shipments allegedly were moved to warehouses in Ciudad Juarez, then packed into the trunks of automobiles that were driven across the international bridge to El Paso.

The cocaine was delivered to Texas warehouses, inventoried and packed into boxes that were loaded into secret compartments on tractor-trailer rigs that moved it to Los Angeles, the indictments say. On the return trip, millions of dollars were packed into the secret compartments, authorities claim.

The indictments say the ring maintained records of multi-ton cocaine shipments received, stored and transported between Texas and California.

Seventy metric tons of cocaine, worth an estimated $21 billion, were moved to Los Angeles from early 1988 until the Sylmar warehouse was discovered, the indictments also say.

But DEA officials place the total at more than 200 tons.

“The indictment charges 70 tons because we can absolutely prove that,” Kuykendall said, adding that “The ledgers show there was an excess of 200 tons” smuggled to Los Angeles.

Profits were returned to Mexico, the indictments say, adding that on Aug. 18, 1989, Eduardo Munoz Talavera received $2.6 million and that smaller amounts were exchanged between ring members from June to November of that year.

Mexican authorities said the millions in profits from cocaine sales was used to buy 62 houses, ranches and office buildings in the Ciudad Juarez area and to fill bank and stock market accounts in Mexico City.

Rafael Munoz Talavera and Rafael Aguilar, a Mexican citizen, in particular, are suspected of having extensive real estate holdings in the border region, where U.S. citizens such as Talavera are not allowed to own property.

Mexican authorities said they believe the property was bought with drug money, making it subject to confiscation.

If convicted of the charges against them in the United States, the accused in the Texas indictments each face life terms and $4-million fines.

American authorities have asked that three suspects wanted on both sides of the border--all U.S. citizens--be returned to the United States if captured in Mexico. Seven people named in the Texas indictments already are in custody. Another seven men arrested in Los Angeles and Las Vegas after the cocaine seizure in Sylmar are not among those named in indictments this week. Three of them have been convicted of federal drug charges, with the other four awaiting a scheduled April trial.

In contrast to the acrimony that has accompanied some cases involving drug agencies in the two countries, American and Mexican law enforcement authorities had high praise for the cooperation demonstrated in the Sylmar investigation.

“This is one of the first major coordinated efforts in federal narcotics law enforcement between the United States and Mexico,” said Glenn W. MacTaggart, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas.

Jose Elias Romero Apis, a Mexican assistant federal prosecutor, said, “The cooperation of American authorities has been vital to dismantling and dismembering this crime organization.”

“The most important development is the cooperation between the Mexican attorney general and the U.S. attorney general,” said MacTaggart. “Virtually all the credit for this goes to Mexican Atty. Gen. Ignacio Morales Lechuga,” appointed last year after a prison riot at the border showed drug kingpins ran the prison.

The cooperation contrasts sharply with the tensions of the late 1980s, after the killing in Guadalajara of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, when suspects were kidnaped in Mexico and brought to the United States for trial. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next month on whether two of those arrests were legal.

Darling reported from Mexico City and Connelly from Los Angeles.