To all those travelers to Cali, beware of who you come across. Don't think for a minute that the days of the narcos in Cali are over. Be careful who you come across that may make strange financial/business proposals, etc., etc., etc..
During the days of Cartel de Cali, American businessmen were on the payroll, and their businesses in the USA served as money laundrying operations and drug distribution cells.
A decent man looking for a nice Calena wife can be easily caught up into something terrible.
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian and U.S. anti-drug agents smashed a ring accused of smuggling up to 15 tons of cocaine per month to the United States and arrested seven suspected smugglers, authorities said on Thursday.
The ring is believed to have shipped to U.S. cities more than 75 tons of cocaine in the last two years through maritime routes in the Pacific, police said.
In a raid dubbed ``Operation Pegasus'' -- the classical winged horse myth -- Colombian police assisted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, arrested seven Colombian men in the cities of Cali, Buenaventura, Tumaco and Cartagena.
The men, who were paraded in handcuffs before reporters at a news conference in the capital Bogota, have been indicted by a Florida court and are sought for extradition to the United States, police chief Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert said.
DEA agent Javier Pena said the ring used fishing boats and cargo ships to take the cocaine to high seas, where smugglers then loaded the drug onto ships bound for U.S. ports.
``This was a very powerful group. Seventy-five tons is a lot of drugs,'' Pena told reporters.
Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine, producing an estimated 580 tons per year. Its booming drug trade is increasingly a source of financing for extremist groups of the right and left fighting in the country's 37-year-old war. About 40,000 people, mainly civilians, have been killed in the last decade alone.
The cocaine shipped each month by the ring had a U.S. street value of $540 million, DEA sources estimate.
The United States, the world's largest consumer of drugs, is providing Colombia with massive military aid for President Andres Pastrana's anti-drug ``Plan Colombia.''
Under pressure from Washington, the South American nation in 1997 lifted a constitutional ban on extradition of Colombians to the United States.
