Spain Busts Colombian Drug Cartel’s Money-Laundering Ring.

SPAIN BUSTS COLOMBIAN DRUG CARTEL’S MONEY-LAUNDERING RING.

EuroNews

July 26, 2011
France

MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police have broken up the money-laundering
operation of one of Latin America’s biggest drug cartels and arrested
the wife of Colombia’s top drug baron, police said on Tuesday.

Police arrested nine suspects and had bank accounts blocked in an
operation against the money-laundering activities of the cartel of
Colombia’s “Don Lucho,” a police spokesman said.

Those detained included four Spaniards, four Colombians and one
Armenian. Warrants have also been issued for the international arrest
of a further seven people, the police said in a separate statement.

Luis Agustin Caicedo Velandia, “Don Lucho” – in jail in the United
States – is considered the leader of Colombia’s largest drug
trafficking and money-laundering network.

Between 2005 and 2009, he laundered more than $1.5 billion (913.6
million pounds), the police said.

The investigation into his cartel’s activities in Spain began in
2010 when the police discovered a false business network operating in
Catalonia, Valencia and Alicante, which was laundering “huge amounts”
of drug-related money, they said.

The organisation in Spain was based in Ribarroja del Turia, in
Valencia, on the eastern Spanish coast and run by Velandia’s wife,
although she was advised and protected by the drug baron’s closest
confidantes, who were also arrested, the police said.

The group set up fake companies to launder drug-related money from
Colombia, Mexico and Panama and also managed a company in Alicante,
about an hour along the coast from Valencia, which bought gold and
pawned jewels.

The gold was melted, made into bars and treated with chemicals to
give it a black-copper colour before being smuggled out of Spain,
the police said.

Lucho was arrested in Argentina in April 2010 and extradited to the
United States where he was convicted for bringing hundreds of tonnes
of cocaine into the country from Colombia, via Mexico.

Colombia, plagued by a decades-long guerrilla conflict, remains the
world’s No. 1 cocaine producer and many armed groups are engaged in
the drug trade.

(Reporting by Blanca Rodriguez; Writing by Judy MacInnes; Editing by
Louise Ireland)

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress