Colombian Cartels Find New Drug Paths to U.S.

Determined to keep control of their lucrative, illegal business, Colombia’s drug cartels are finding new partners to move their cocaine and heroin into the United States and Europe.

Imprisoning the country’s top drug lords and deporting their traditional European contacts weakened the cartels for a time, but now law enforcement officials fear that they are rebuilding their illicit empires with reliable new routes.

The cartels are capitalizing on the legendary smuggling prowess of Arubans, Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory and the Dominican Republic’s strong New York City ties. Guatemala, once merely a stop on the drug route into Mexico and the United States, has become a jumping-off point for Europe as well. And the Russian mafia is now helping deliver the drugs to the European market, according to Colombian and Caribbean law enforcement sources.

The alliances emerged in an attempt to make an end run around Mexico’s drug distributors, who had taken advantage of the Colombian cartels’ vulnerability to grasp a tremendous share of the market.

“There are great efforts to break the Mexican monopoly,” said one high-level intelligence source. “Groups who don’t have anything and who don’t want anything to do with Mexico are exploring new possibilities.”

The growing importance of heroin in the mix of Colombia’s illegal drug exports has permitted another distribution shift that circumvents the Mexicans. Heroin is worth nine times more by weight than cocaine, making small quantities of heroin highly profitable.

So drug traffickers no longer need to hide large shipments of cocaine in freighters that dock at Mexico’s Pacific ports. Instead, they can rely on “mules” to take heroin directly to the United States in their luggage or their stomachs. These couriers transport about 90% of the Colombian heroin that enters the U.S., according to the intelligence source.

Mexico became a necessary stopover point for Colombian drugs headed to the U.S. about three years ago, when tighter controls made transshipment through the Bahamas, Jamaica and other traditional Caribbean routes highly risky. By the time Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the self-confessed heads of the monolithic Cali cartel, were arrested in 1995, the Colombians were hooked on Mexican help.

“With the fall of the Rodriguezes, Mexican ‘narcos’ began to take control away from the Colombian cartels,” said the intelligence source. “Today, Colombian organizations depend on the Mexicans for getting 60% to 70% of their drugs into the States, and the Mexicans have moved from being simple intermediaries to the owners of the trade.”

But as the big Colombian cartels fragmented, the infrastructure they used to get drugs across the U.S. border crumbled. Emerging traffickers on the South American country’s Atlantic coast to the north and in Valle del Cauca province, of which Cali is the capital, in the southwest developed different contacts to export their narcotics.

Distribution in Europe posed a different problem. The Colombians traditionally worked with the Italian Mafia, especially to launder money in Europe, according to intelligence sources. But that alliance has weakened over the last two years as nine Italian capos have been extradited from Colombia.

Further, the fragmenting of the Colombian cartels has made the business less attractive to the Italians, sources say, because now they must deal with several small players rather than a single, dominant drug lord. While the ties between the Italians and Colombians have not broken, they have definitely frayed.

Poolside Drug Deals

As the Mexican traffickers extended their tentacles deeper into the narcotics business, their services became pricier. They doubled their smuggling fee to 40% to 50% of a cocaine shipment, said Special Agent Bill Mitchell, who heads the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami field office.

In response, Colombian traffickers began testing alternative routes in the Caribbean. In recent months, they have struck long-term alliances with Dominicans, who charge a 20% smuggling fee, according to Felix Jimenez, a DEA special agent in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Dominicans provide a full-service smuggling package for Colombians, DEA officials say. “They have the language, proximity and a full network in New York, so they have no problems bringing money back,” one official said.

Dominican officials from President Leonel Fernandez down have openly acknowledged that they are worried about the role their countrymen are playing in the drug trade and are seeking closer cooperation with U.S. law enforcement.

DEA officials said many deals are struck on the eastern Caribbean islands of St. Martin--which is half French, half Dutch--and Antigua. “St. Martin is a very comfortable place for Colombians to travel,” one agent said. “The U.S. can’t get our hands on them.”

Dominicans and Colombians check into entire blocks of hotel rooms for a week or more and sit by the pool talking on rented cellular phones until the shipment is set up, according to another DEA official. From there, the official said, the Dominicans take charge.

Dominican “armies for hire” have taken over entire housing projects in Puerto Rico and in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood--staging areas to vastly expand Colombia’s U.S. drug market, DEA officials contend.

Dominicans also control a two-block area in Queens that is full of wire-transfer businesses set up to launder money, said one DEA official.

“Everything’s in line,” he said. “They are set in the States.”

Targeting Puerto Rico

Colombians looking for new alliances in the drug trade have also targeted Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that lies 70 miles east of the Dominican Republic.

“Cocaine and heroin traffickers from Colombia have transformed Puerto Rico into the largest staging area in the Caribbean for smuggling Colombian cocaine and heroin [into] the U.S.,” James Milford, DEA deputy chief, said during testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee in July.

When Jimenez’s agents cracked a major Puerto Rican drug ring in April, they arrested two Colombians and nine Dominicans. The alleged leader of the ring, Jouhan Rivera Rosa, had been arrested earlier in the Dominican Republic on separate drug charges.

Traffic has also picked up over the past three years on the island of Aruba, a landing site for drug planes for nearly two decades, according to law enforcement sources.

Proximity to Colombia--as well as connections to Europe and North America that the tourist trade has already established--has made Aruba an excellent transshipment point, U.S., Colombian and Caribbean authorities agree.

In addition, Aruba is well equipped to provide money-laundering services, they said.

Aruban smuggling fame dates to the days of the Dutch pirates. In this century, Arubans have established close contacts on the Guajira peninsula, Colombia’s traditional entry point for contraband.

Still under the protection of the Netherlands, Aruba is now a major passageway for cocaine and heroin entering Europe, Dutch authorities say.

The Colombians also appear to be turning to Central America for new drug routes into Europe.

Guatemalan and German authorities are investigating a case that has so far resulted in the arrest of Andreas Haeneggi, the local general manager of the Swiss corporate giant Nestle, and his son. They, along with the police chief of the tourist resort of Antigua, are suspected of being part of a major drug ring that hid $100 million worth of cocaine in cut flowers bound for Germany. All three have denied the charges.

With the operations of Italian allies curtailed, the Colombians are finding that their most reliable drug partner in Europe is the Russian mafia, officials say.

Russian Connection

With an explosion of drug consumption, especially heroin, in the former Soviet Union, criminal organizations--made up in part of ex-members of the KGB and former military and police officials--are making a bid for control of the East European market, according to Colombian authorities.

“The Russian mafia has set itself up on the Caribbean islands so as to be able to contact the Colombians,” said Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, commander of the Colombian police. For example, more than two dozen Russian banks have offices on the island of Antigua, raising questions about why so many faraway financial institutions would have so much interest in such a small island, Caribbean law enforcement sources say.

Serrano readily admits that this emerging alliance worries him. “These are tough people,” he said. “An alliance between the Russians, the Italians and the Colombians would finish us off.”

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Darling reported from Bogota, Puerto Rico, Miami, Barbados and Guatemala. Times Caribbean Bureau Chief Mark Fineman contributed to this report from Miami and Washington, and Special Correspondent Steven Ambrus contributed from Bogota.

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New Drug Partners

In an attempt to break Mexico’s preeminence in narcotics smuggling, Colombian traffickers are establishing new ties to bring their drugs to market. Places where they have found new allies:

Guatemala

Dominican Republic

Puerto Rico

Aruba

Russia