- COLOMBIA -- It was supposed
to be a routine drugs bust at a nondescript house in the Surrey stockbroker
belt.
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- But instead of a mere cache of cocaine, the Woking residence
presented the national crime squad officers with something potentially
far more valuable - $6bn in US Government bonds.
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- If the bonds prove to be genuine the find will be by
far the biggest seizure of criminal assets in British legal history.
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- The haul, worth the equivalent of about £4.4bn,
would dwarf the total seizures from British criminals going back years,
and is more than three times the $2bn estimated worth of the former Colombian
drug baron Pablo Escobar.
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- The raid last month was part of an international operation
against British, Colombian and Ecuadorian gangs accused of being among
the traffickers responsible for the record amounts of cocaine and crack
flooding into the UK.
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- "This represents the most overwhelming blow against
drug trafficking and money laundering," said Guillermo Anibal Ortega,
director of the Colombia's attorney general's office investigation unit.
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- David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said it was an "excellent
result" that was "hitting the criminals in the pocket by seizing
their ill-gotten gains".
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- One of the biggest problems for dealers is laundering
the "dirty" drugs money into untraceable funds. Bonds are ideal
as hundreds of billions of dollars are traded every day in the world's
markets.
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- Officers from the National Crime Squad also searched
seven other homes and businesses in Essex and north London during two operations
on 18 July and 7 August. During the raids, codenamed Operation Hobart,
detectives unearthed 55,000 Ecstasy tablets, 15 kilos of amphetamine powder,
a couple of kilos of Ecstasy powder, and a small amount of cocaine. In
addition they are planning to seize goods, including cars, houses and furniture,
worth an estimated £7m. So far 13 suspects have been arrested in
Britain, all of whom are understood to be British nationals.
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- The South American link was uncovered when investigators
found that one of the men arrested in the UK has a house in Colombia, the
world's biggest exporter of cocaine. The authorities in South America were
alerted and a joint operation, codenamed Operation "Cangrejo"
or Crab, was set up.
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- News of the operation only became public after the Colombian
police arrested two men, Oscar Roa Casadiego alias "Carlos Mario"
and Luis Felipe Solarte Martinez, alias "el Doctor", in Cali
on Thursday.
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- Two other men, Carlos Andres Benevides and Javier Marcelino
Benevides, were arrested in Quito in Equador, where police also seized
9.5kg of cocaine.
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- The authorities are starting to piece together the international
drugs network, which stretches from Colombia to Ecuador, Mexico, and across
the Atlantic to Spain, Portugal, and Netherlands, before entering the British
drugs market.
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- The cocaine is thought to have been transported by sea,
disguising its activities as a giant financial and business network across
Britain, Ecuador, and Colombia. Drug packages were hidden in mechanical
rollers used for heavy machinery. The South American organisation was caught
following surveillance and phone tapping by a special police unit.
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- There were two main routes used by the traffickers. One
was from Colombia's Caribbean coast, through Mexico, and then to the UK.
The second was from the Colombian city of Cali, south to Ecuador's main
port of Guayaquil and then to Europe, probably to Spain and Portugal, before
heading to Britain, possibly via the Netherlands.
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- Despite the successes however,there is little sign the
UK's cocaine supply is drying up. In 2001 police and customs seized 2,842kg
of cocaine. The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), in its most
recent threat assessment, said there was no indication of a shortage of
cocaine in the UK. It said this suggested that "the trade is extremely
resilient and capable of withstanding multi-tonne seizures without lasting
damage".
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- NCIS also noted that that the American market appeared
to be "saturated" and that the South American drug traffickers
were looking to Europe for new business.
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- Several paramilitary groups, particularly Farc and Eln,
are now farming the coca crop and have filled the power void that followed
the Colombian government's success in combating the notorious Cali and
Medellin cartels of the 1980s.
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- President Alvaro Uribe beefed up the armed forces after
he took office in August last year and inroads havebeen made in the crackdown
on smaller drug cartels operating in Colombia and in the region.
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- The growing influence of the Colombians in the British
drugs market is reflected in a series of high profile court cases involving
South American traffickers operating in the UK.
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- In one of the most notorious cases a gang working in
London for the Cali-based drug cartels in Colombia, was jailed in June
last year for 60 years for laundering £50m from cocaine sold on the
streets of Britain.
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- The gang operated through corrupt bureaux de changes,
couriers and complex electronic money transfers between accounts in the
UK, Isle of Man, the US and Colombia. The gang included six Colombians,
five British nationals, a Thai and an Ecuadorean. When one of the gang
leaders was arrested he was found with a bag containing $382,000 (£258,500)
in cash.
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- Over three years to April 2000, the launderers, who had
no contact with drugs, "cleaned" the proceeds from more than
2,500kg (5,500lbs) of cocaine sold in the UK. Much of the cocaine was smuggled
via a freighter from Colombia to Spain and into Britain via Dover.
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- Meanwhile the National Crime Squad (NCS) are still waiting
to find out whether the $6bn bonds they seized last month are genuine.
Because of a legal dispute about their seizure they have not been able
to examine them yet.
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- A NCS spokeswoman explained: "We went in there looking
for drugs, searching for drugs - anything other than that is a bit of a
bonus.
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- "We are still conducting inquiries as to whether
the bonds are genuine or not."
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- But Jeffrey Robinson, a money laundering specialist,
argued that whether or not the US bonds proved to be genuine, the raids
had grave implications for Britain.
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- "If the bonds are real it merely reinforces that
Britain is a toilet of dirty money," he said. "If the bonds are
not real it reinforces the point that drug traffickers are moving into
other counterfeit business.
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- "Either way it is gravely serious for Britain and
this is just the tip of the iceberg."
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=440750
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