Bolivian Accused of Heading Drug Cartel Convicted : Crime: Jorge Roca Suarez is found guilty of cocaine, tax and money-laundering charges in his second trial. Authorities say verdict sends a message to traffickers.

A Bolivian man accused of heading that country’s largest cocaine cartel was convicted in a Los Angeles federal court Friday, ending his second trial on those charges.

Jorge Roca Suarez was found guilty of conspiracy to manufacture cocaine, conspiracy to export currency, conspiracy to evade taxes, tax evasion and money laundering. He faces a possible life sentence in federal prison when he is sentenced next month.

Seven cohorts, including his wife and three sisters, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and are expected to receive sentences ranging from probation to 15 years.

Roca, who owned a 19-room home in San Marino when he was arrested in 1990, sat stoically as the verdicts were read. He was returned to custody by marshals at the conclusion of the session.

“We’re extremely pleased with the result,” said Assistant U. S. Atty. John F. Gibbons, who prosecuted the case along with Assistant U. S. Atty. Walter F. Brown. “It shows what can be accomplished when you get agencies pulling together on a major investigation.”

The investigation took several years and involved agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U. S. Customs Service and the Internal Revenue Service.

Robert Bonner, the administrator of the DEA, said in an interview from Washington that the verdicts would send an international signal of the United States’ commitment to bringing drug traffickers to justice.

“It’s a significant victory,” he said. “This guy was a top Bolivian drug kingpin. . . . We ask the government of Bolivia to bring traffickers there to justice, and it’s important that when we apprehend traffickers here that we do the same.”

Jurors returned their verdicts just two hours after beginning deliberations. U. S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson thanked them for their efforts and dismissed them.

Friday’s verdicts marked the conclusion of Roca’s second trial. He was tried late last year on the same charges, but that jury deadlocked, with just one juror holding out for acquittal on some of the charges.

Wilson then ordered a retrial, which began Jan. 26.

Authorities say that Roca came to the United States from Bolivia in the 1970s but returned to his homeland in the early 1980s and went to work for his uncle, Roberto Gomez Suarez, known as the “Cocaine King of Bolivia.”

According to the indictment in the case, Roca took over his uncle’s business and became a “leader and decision-maker” of the so-called Santa Ana cartel. He returned to the United States and ran his international drug-smuggling operation from Southern California, prosecutors said.

Roca’s lawyers were unavailable for comment Friday, but they have said the charges are false and that Roca is an honest businessman. They also accused government witnesses of lying and said the DEA waged a campaign of terror in Bolivia that intimidated witnesses who otherwise might have testified on Roca’s behalf.

Yolanda Barrera, Roca’s lead attorney, asked Wilson to toss the case out because of outrageous government conduct in Bolivia, but Wilson rejected that claim during a crucial pretrial hearing. That ruling cleared the way for the case to go to trial.

During the proceeding, witnesses testified that Roca supplied Colombian cocaine boss Pablo Escobar with cocaine paste. Escobar, one of the world’s most notorious drug dealers and a leader of the Medellin cartel, converted the paste into cocaine powder and shipped it to the United States, authorities said.

The DEA’s Bonner added that Roca also had ties to other major Colombian cartels and that the dismantling of Roca’s organization was disruptive to those groups as well.

Once the drugs arrived in this country, Roca’s organization was responsible for shipping back millions of dollars in illegal profits. As part of their case, prosecutors presented photographs of appliances such as vacuum cleaners stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. Those appliances were shipped to organization members in Bolivia, witnesses said.

“As part of this operation, Roca Suarez or his cadre of lieutenants, mostly family members, received in excess of $50 million from the Medellin cartel in Los Angeles as payment for this cocaine,” according to a statement by the U. S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Most of the money was returned to Bolivia and used to pay the expenses of the operation, but a portion was spent on real estate in Southern California. At the time of his arrest, Roca and his organization owned homes and apartment houses in San Marino, Alhambra and Monterey Park, prosecutors said.

Those properties were seized under federal asset-forfeiture laws, which allow the government to take property purchased with illegal drug money.

Roca’s wife, sisters and three other co-defendants are scheduled for sentencing on March 1. Roca will be sentenced separately on March 29. In addition to his prison time, he faces fines of more than $5 million.