Major Colombian Drug Trafficker Pleads Guilty

reuters.com Mon March 10, 2003 07:08 PM ET By Gail Appleson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of Colombia's most powerful drug traffickers pleaded guilty on Monday to heading a cartel that smuggled massive amounts of cocaine into the United States and hid hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

Alberto Orlandez Gamboa, 47, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, drug smuggling and money laundering in Manhattan federal court. He faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years in prison and a possible maximum of a life term and millions of dollars in fines. Sentencing was scheduled for May 27.

The federal indictment charged that he led an organization based in the coastal city of Barranquilla that smuggled cocaine to Europe, Central America and the United States, where it went to New York, Miami and Philadelphia.

It said the organization sometimes shipped cocaine in crates of mustard and cough medicine to mask its odor. It was also hidden in shipments of engine parts, cement, and sometimes inside ceramic tiles.

The indictment said that the profits were hidden in various ways. In one case, more than $11 million was found hidden in hollowed-out truck transmissions in a shipping container destined for Venezuela from Port Elizabeth, New Jersey.

U.S. authorities said Orlandez Gamboa also went by the alias of Caracol and that his name was sometimes spelled Orlande Gamboa.

He had been scheduled to go on trial on Monday for leading conspiracies to import thousands of pounds of cocaine into the United States and to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal drug proceeds.

Orlandez Gamboa was extradited to the United States in 2000 from Colombia, where he had been arrested in 1998. If he is eventually released from U.S. prison, he could be deported to Colombia.

Although he had initially pleaded not guilty to the U.S. charges, he changed his plea after a federal appeals court issued a critical ruling against him last month.

The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that incriminating statements he made in Colombia to local authorities during unsuccessful plea talks there could be used as evidence in his New York trial.

The statements were made in 1999 when the U.S. government began seeking his extradition. In an effort to remain in Colombia, Orlandez Gamboa made certain admissions to Colombian authorities in the hopes of reaching a deal that would allow his case to proceed there.

He was among the first Colombian nationals extradited from that country to the United States after the Colombian government eliminated the ban on extradition in 1997.

The crimes to which Orlandez Gamboa pleaded guilty began in 1996, however authorities said he began leading the cartel of large-scale traffickers in 1990 or earlier and kept running the group while in prison during 1998.

The indictment charged that he kept his leadership role by directing others to commit bribery and acts of violence, including carrying out kidnappings and assassinations of rival drug dealers.