Pubdate: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2003 The Miami Herald Contact: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262 Author: Larry Lebowitz, of the Herald COLOMBIA CARTEL LEADERS FACE NEW CHARGES According To A New U.S. Indictment, Brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela Continued To Rule Over The Cali Cartel From Their Colombian Prison Cells. The brothers behind the Cali Cartel are facing new U.S. charges accusing them of trafficking more than 55 tons of cocaine, laundering $2 billion in proceeds and silencing witnesses with money and murder. According to a new federal indictment unsealed Monday in Miami, Miguel Rodriguez-Orejuela and older brother Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela continued to lord over the cartel from their Colombian prison cells. Led by businessmen in well-tailored suits, the Cali Cartel surpassed the gun-slinging Medellin Cartel as Colombia's biggest cocaine trafficking organization after the December 1993 killing of Pablo Escobar on a Medellin rooftop. ''In its heyday, the Cali Cartel was believed to be responsible for about 80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States. It was also responsible for countless murders and a reign of terror in Colombia,'' said Jesus Torres, interim special agent in charge with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami. The brothers were rearrested, and served copies of the new indictment, in their respective cells Monday. A manhunt is under way in Colombia for Miguel's elder son, William RodriguezAbadia, who is charged with taking over the cartel's day-to- day operations since his father and uncle went to prison in 1995. A total of 11 men were indicted. Four are in custody: the jailed brothers, the cartel's chief accountant Luis Eduardo Cuartas-Pardo, and a fourth man who is pending positive identification. The case, investigators say, stands to make history in the annals of the international drug prosecutions. While more than 100 cartel drug runners, money launderers, couriers and lawyers have been prosecuted in U.S. courts, the Rodriguez-Orejuelas have been indicted at least three times by U.S. grand juries -- twice before in Miami -- but never brought to justice here. But under the terms of a 1997 treaty that resumed extradition with Colombia and a friendly government, police and military apparatus under President Alvaro Uribe, the brothers are expected to be sent to Miami to face trial within a year. Many of the drug-trafficking, money laundering and witness-tampering charges contained in the new indictment predate the 1997 treaty and have been mentioned in other indictments, trials, court records and affidavits. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Ed Kacerosky, who has been tracking the Cali Cartel since the early 1990s, received information two years ago that the brothers had resumed running the cartel from prison through cellphones and regular visits with family members. RECENT EXTRADITIONS All of that information has been bolstered with the recent extraditions of other high-profile cartel figures -- including Victor Patino-Fomeque -- who are now cooperating with authorities. Operation Cornerstone started in 1990 after Customs officials began intercepting large-scale loads of cocaine hidden in concrete fence posts, frozen broccoli, lumber, ceramic tile, pool tables, coffee and chlorine cylinders. In 1995, Kacerosky and federal prosecutors put together an indictment charging 59 people with operating a $2 billion cocaine distribution enterprise dating back to 1983. Six lawyers in the case, including three former federal prosecutors, one of whom served as the top official who oversaw investigations of the Cali Cartel, were indicted. Four of the six lawyers pleaded guilty. The other two were convicted at trials. Prosecutors said the dirty lawyers distributed hush money to captured cartel operatives and solicited false affidavits that would exonerate the brothers. In the new case, the cartel members are charged with silencing their associates through bribes and violence, preventing them from cooperating with agents or testifying before grand juries or at trial. The feds say Miguel Rodriguez-Orejuela sent Guillermo Restrepo Lara to Miami to arrange for the murder of Rafael Lombrano, who was expected to testify in an upcoming case. Lombrano was murdered on Oct. 14, 1990. Restrepo was indicted Monday and remains at large. The indictment says Restrepo also murdered another potential government witness, Leonidas Rhadames Trujillo, and three companions in August 1994. HIT ORDERED In August 1997, agents say, the brothers ordered a hit on the manager of a C=FAcuta, Colombia, company that had previously exported their cocaine-laden chlorine cylinders to Houston. The brothers are also accused of making regular monthly commissary payments to several jailed cartel associates in Florida and Texas, hoping to buy their silence, as well as monthly ''subsistence payments'' to their relatives and common-law wives. Torres said the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers will be moved, with the help of the Colombian government, to a high-security military prison pending the outcome of extradition hearings. U.S. lawyers attached to the embassy in Bogota filed the initial requests for extradition over the weekend and hope to have the brothers on American soil to face trial within a year. If they are extradited, the Miami trial would become the biggest drug war showcase since the conviction this year of former Medellin Cartel leader Fabio Ochoa. He is appealing his conviction and 30-year sentence handed down in August. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart