Tag: Organized Crime

June 16, 2020

Carlos Lehder, a top leader of the Medellín cartel in the 1980s who pioneered aerial cocaine transshipment to the United States, completes a lengthy sentence in U.S. prison. A dual citizen of Germany, the 70-year-old Lehder departs for Berlin.

Tags: Extradition, Organized Crime, U.S. Policy

June 16, 2020

June 14, 2020

The daily El Espectador reveals the existence of “Code Black,” a corruption network within the U.S.-funded Antinarcotics Directorate of Colombia’s National Police. Starting in 2017, police whistleblowers began denouncing embezzlement and a scheme to use wiretaps to shake down narcotraffickers for money. The Prosecutor-General’s Office’s (Fiscalía’s) investigation has since moved very slowly.

Photo source: El Espectador.

Tags: Corruption, Drug Policy, Organized Crime

June 14, 2020

April 28, 2020

A presidential decree lowers judicial penalties to members of criminal groups who agree to demobilize peacefully and submit to the High Commissioner for Peace.

It does not apply to the ELN, whose “political character” the state recognizes, making benefits available to individual ELN deserters. It applies instead to FARC dissident groups, the Gulf Clan and Caparros neo-paramilitary groups, and the Pelusos or EPL. These are the groups that, according to the government, meet the Geneva Conventions Protocol II definition of those “which, under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted military operations.”

Tags: Armed Groups, Demobilization Disarmament and Reintegration, High Commissioner for Peace, Justice System, Organized Crime

April 28, 2020