Drug Trial Witness Says DEA Paid Him $370,000 in 3 Years

An admitted former drug trafficker who says he transported cocaine in Bolivia and was an indirect operative in the notorious Medellin cartel testified Wednesday that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has paid him more than $370,000 over the last three years.

Carlos Villarroel, who made about $1,600 a month transporting meat in his small plane before he fell into the drug trade in 1982, said the payments did not begin until he came to the United States three years ago from Bolivia, where he had become a DEA informant.

He suggested that the money was not a reward for his current testimony in U.S. District Court against alleged Bolivian drug kingpin Jorge Suarez Roca, saying that he is under no obligation from the DEA to provide that testimony. Villarroel, 39, said he received the money for living expenses.

An assistant U.S. attorney in the case would neither confirm nor deny the amount cited by Villarroel, but said the DEA sometimes pays informants for “information, intelligence and security.”

Last month, The Times revealed that the federal government has paid more than $2.7 million to witnesses, including some with serious criminal histories, in another high-profile, drug-related case--the 1984 torture-murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

At that time, legal experts acknowledged that such payments are considered an essential part in fighting drugs, but some were concerned about how far the government goes to gather testimony.

Sonia Chahin, one of Roca’s defense lawyers, said Wednesday out of court that the payments show that Villarroel’s testimony is bought and not credible.

Villarroel made the disclosure about the payments on the second day of the trial of Roca, who is charged with high-level drug trafficking and international money laundering.

Prosecutors contend that Roca commanded a cocaine cartel in Bolivia that shipped thousands of kilograms of cocaine paste to Colombia for processing and collected “boxfuls of cash” in Los Angeles.

Roca and members of his family were arrested two years ago at his San Marino home. Seven of his co-defendants pleaded guilty last month to various drug and money-laundering charges, leaving him the only defendant in the case.

Villarroel testified that when he got into the drug trade, he had seen cocaine only twice in his life and that he had never knowingly transported drugs in his plane.

However, he said that within a year he had made contacts that allowed him to introduce Roca to Pablo Escobar, then the head of the Medellin cartel.

Chahin, in a break during the testimony, scoffed at Villarroel’s claim, saying that it is unlikely that Villarroel, who was by then an informant as well as a drug pilot, could so easily penetrate Escobar’s security.