Cocaine Kingpin’s Tailspin Shows Reach of His Trade

Pudgy and haunted, he fled his pursuers in a haze of cocaine, liquor and well-founded paranoia. But the “Lord of the Skies” was still thinking big.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as the boss of Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez cartel, had moved dope by the jetload, corrupted generals and shouldered aside his former Colombian partners to become the cowboy emperor of cocaine. When he needed a place to hide, he made a typically audacious choice: Chile, a continent away from the dusty Mexican border towns where he fought his wars and made his billions.

Carrillo set himself up in high-rolling style here, planning to run his operation from afar, launder money and explore new smuggling routes, according to Chilean and U.S. law enforcement officials.

Those plans died when he did, after extensive plastic surgery in Mexico in July. But the news of his move to Chile sheds light on his last months, which combine 1940s melodrama and 1990s globalization.

Carrillo was a thug, a family man and the chief executive of a multinational enterprise. His plan to transfer his empire here shows how the drug underworld ranges across borders into seemingly pristine strongholds of free-market modernization.

“Given the reality of drug trafficking, there is no nation that is immune,” said Pablo Lagos, an advisor to Chile’s federal anti-drug commission. “Organized crime today is by definition multinational. The concept of the global village applies very well to drug trafficking.”

The thought of Mexican gangsters cruising the placid streets of this capital in Porsches and Jaguars has stunned this nation, whose personality has been shaped by German immigrants, robust economic growth and a 17-year dictatorship that lasted until 1990. The military coup of 1973 ended a fledgling cocaine production industry tied to Colombian middlemen.

Chile’s remoteness and comparatively well-disciplined police have kept drugs at bay. The nation’s role on the chessboard of the underworld has consisted mainly of supplying chemicals used for refining cocaine in neighboring Peru and Bolivia.

This year, though, Supreme Court officials were accused of protecting an accused kingpin who allegedly smuggled cocaine to Europe via Bolivia and Brazil. The Carrillo case briefly snared a politically connected Santiago lawyer, the former ambassador to Britain, who allegedly counseled the traffickers. The lawyer was released without being charged Tuesday, but Lagos said police will keep investigating the local connection “no matter who falls.”

All this reinforces fear here--mixed with a certain pride--of globe-trotting gangsters looking for new markets.

“When you have a nation with an open economy, modern technology and strong foreign investment, it offers conveniences to criminals like Carrillo,” said Lagos. “And the isolation plays a role. Because he came to a nation that is lost on the map, so far from his own.”

Carrillo had established alliances with Bolivian suppliers and had reportedly traveled to Russia and the Middle East. But determined Mexican and U.S. investigators hunted him around the globe and through a labyrinth of corrupt official allies, making his life increasingly difficult.

A recent photo--found among closets of designer suits and flashy cowboy boots in one of 11 properties connected to Carrillo here--hints at his decline. In it, the drug lord stands in front of a waterfall--probably at Iguazu on the Argentine-Brazilian border, police said. His belly protrudes beneath a loose-fitting shirt. His face is bloated and pasty; his hair and mustache are scraggly. Near him stands Ricardo Reyes, his physician, a youthful Colombian who stayed close to Carrillo during the final months.

“Amado was doing a lot of coke, booze, messing around--he was in bad shape, healthwise,” said a U.S. law enforcement official. Carrillo’s poor health contributed to his death after plastic surgery, the U.S. official said, downplaying speculation that Carrillo was killed with an injection.

A year ago, Carrillo dispatched emissaries to explore potential refuges, police said. His scouts met with accountants and lawyers and prepared reports on investment prospects and security risks in nations including Argentina and Brazil. Accused lieutenant Manuel Bitar and the cartel’s “director of finances,” Carlos Colin Padilla, worked on the Chilean beachhead between August and February, said Mario Mallea Llanos, the chief of the anti-drug police.

“The objective was to study the possibility of establishing his organization outside Mexico,” Mallea said. “Bitar described all the good expectations and perspectives for Carrillo to transfer his illegal businesses to our nation.”

After the arrest earlier this year of Mexico’s anti-drug czar--allegedly Carrillo’s key official protector--the drug lord made a three-day reconnaissance trip to Chile and decided to move here, police said.

“There are a lot of questions,” the U.S. official said. “Why Chile? He had to have a comfort level. . . . There was a lot of pressure in Mexico. He wasn’t going to cut the rope” to his empire.

An entourage of a dozen people arrived during March, traveling with authentic Mexican passports that bore fake names. To avoid scrutiny at the airport, they entered with tourist visas from the Argentine city of Mendoza. They included a grown son from a first marriage, Carrillo’s wife, Sonia, their four small children and key aides: the doctor, a chief bodyguard and the “finance director.” Eduardo Gonzalez Quirarte, allegedly the No. 3 Juarez cartel boss, arrived April 30 with his own family and bodyguards, authorities here said.

The drug lord bought a bulletproof blue BMW for himself and a four-wheel-drive Ford for the wife and kids. He rented mansions and a ranch that reminded him of his native state, Sinaloa. Guarded by a retinue of five gunmen, police said, he visited the Pacific resort of Vina del Mar and Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan, a town at the bottom of the world.

The drug lord’s family were nice people, said a maid who worked for them in a hacienda-style house behind a stucco-and-wood wall in Santa Maria, a fashionable neighborhood with a view of wooded hillsides and the high-rise Santiago skyline beyond. They paid $10,000 a month in rent.

“They slept a lot,” the maid said.

On Mother’s Day, Carrillo threw a party for his wife featuring a mariachi band. Despite the festivities, they never lost the mind-set of fugitives, Mallea said. Servants told police about the Mexican group’s reaction one night when a power failure hit the mansion. The family hit the floor; bodyguards pulled guns and took up defensive positions in the dark, fearing an imminent attack, Mallea said.

By April, Chilean police were investigating a tip from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican authorities about Carrillo’s expansion into Chile, Mallea said. The lead came from the arrest of Miami-bound Colombian smugglers who were carrying more than 24 pounds of cocaine and Bitar’s phone number in Santiago, the police chief said.

Questions persist about the assertion by Chilean officials that they were shadowing the traffickers and investigating Carrillo’s suspected presence. How could they not have spotted Carrillo if they were indeed following the gangsters, who set up front companies and made million-dollar investments? But authorities said they learned that the drug lord himself had been here only after the arrest in Mexico this month of Bitar, who is cooperating with police.

It is also unclear why Carrillo went back to Mexico for plastic surgery; Argentina and Brazil have booming plastic surgery industries. He may have learned that Chilean police were investigating him, Lagos said. Carrillo reportedly traveled to Cuba in June before making the fateful trip back to Mexico.

After learning of the kingpin’s death, his family and most of the aides left in a hurry. His wife did not break down, the maid said.

“It was a question of seconds,” the maid said. “She just packed a bag and left.”