RANCHERS IN COLOMBIA BANKROLL THE VIGILANTES

MONTERIA, Colombia - A few years ago, Sergio Ochoa all but abandoned his
ranch. Leftist guerrillas were extorting money from landowners and torching
the homes of those who did not pay. Some cattlemen, including Mr. Ochoa's
brother, were kidnapped. Others were killed.

"I had 14 extortion letters from these people," Mr. Ochoa said. "The
guerrillas used to be all over."

Today Mr. Ochoa's ranch is inside a swath of northern Colombia that is one
of the few rural areas not under the guerrillas' sway.

The reason is no secret: an organization of paramilitary fighters, the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, has wiped three rebel groups from
the area in a fierce campaign characterized by massacres of peasants and
assassinations.

Now an aggressive investigation by the national attorney general is vividly
showing how landowners and businessmen here in Córdoba and in a neighboring
province - the heart of the country's prime cattle-raising region - donated
heavily to transform a small group of outlaws into an 8,000-man militia. In
the process the Self-Defense Forces have become a huge challenge to
President Andrés Pastrana's administration, which is under pressure from
alarmed officials in Washington and Europe to dismantle the organization.

At the same time, the president and his advisers are in difficult peace
negotiations with the guerrillas, talks that the paramilitary forces
violently oppose. Indeed, those forces have stepped up the killings,
slaying not only rebels but also trade unionists, peasant leaders, human
rights workers and others they deem collaborators with the rebels. Already
this year, paramilitary gunmen have killed nearly 1,300 people, according
to the government's human rights ombudsman.

The government faces an entrenched, generously financed organization, one
that earns huge sums from the cocaine trade and also benefits from the
collaboration of some military units.

But perhaps more troubling to Colombia's democracy is how outwardly
respectable citizens, fed up with the government's failure to control the
guerrillas, have willingly financed the paramilitary group.

"How do you defend yourself against a well-armed, well-trained and numerous
guerrilla force?" said one established rancher, Rodrigo García Caicedo, who
admitted having donated in the past. "With an equally well-armed,
well-trained and numerous organization."

People in Córdoba are, indeed, effusive about the Self-Defense Forces,
perhaps nowhere more so than in the foothills of the Sinú Mountains,
southeast of Montería.

In the town of Valencia, ground zero for guerrilla activity a decade ago,
some speak of the paramilitary fighters as saviors, not only for battling
rebels but also for paving a few roads and bringing electricity to some
hamlets.

"The Self-Defense Forces are a cry of hope for everyone," said Cecilia
Vargas, principal of a school outside the town that was built with
paramilitary money. "We believe that without the Self-Defense Forces, which
is the brake on the guerrillas, we would not be able to live here."

But critics say the government cannot allow such support to continue. "The
government has to demonstrate that it will not let an illegitimate
organization benefit from illegitimate support," said Michael Gold-Biss, a
Colombian-born expert on the country at St. Cloud State University in
Minnesota. "That's why the attorney general's office has to be assertive,
go to Montería to dismantle some of this."

It remains unclear how much money the Self-Defense Forces have collected.
But an American investigator in the United States Embassy who has tracked
paramilitary financing schemes for years, speaking on condition of
anonymity, says the group has anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion in
bank and investment accounts in Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg and other
countries.

Untold sums are also in Colombia, said the investigator, who added that the
group most likely hid assets in the form of hotels, shopping centers and
other property under its control.

"The Self-Defense Forces do not need to work hard to find resources,"
Isabel Cristina Bolaños Dereix, a former member knowledgeable about
fund-raising, told investigators.

"If they legalized the Self-Defense Forces, many people would confess that
they are giving money," she said, according to a transcript of her
interrogation last September.

Indeed, documents from the inquiry, filed with a court in Bogotá, show that
the group operated a network of accountants and middlemen who collected
donations, then used front companies to funnel the money to the
paramilitary forces.

Some details of the money-raising scheme came to light in May, when the
attorney general's office raided the homes and organizations of suspected
paramilitary group members and their supporters in Montería, carting off
documents and computers and arresting four people. Thirty more are now
being sought.

The attorney general told the court that donations generated from those and
other groups supported an extreme right aimed at combating guerrillas on
one hand, but also waging "a war without quarter against the Colombian left."

The documents said the violence was produced by "very defined sectors of
society, like large landowners, ranchers, industrialists and financiers"
who worked with drug traffickers, military officers and politicians to
defend their interests. And they have done so through donations in the
millions of dollars.

"In these documents we have been able to establish the expenditures for
provisions and general costs," a high-ranking official in the attorney
general's office said. "We have been able to follow the money."

But the attorney general's office faces daunting obstacles. The office is
underfinanced and must often depend on the army to protect its
investigators during dangerous operations. Several prosecutors have been
assassinated in recent years; others have fled the country.

Prosecutors uncovered records, though, of outlays for arms, medicine,
clothing and other necessities, as well as proof of paramilitary bank
accounts, evidence that then led to the May raid, according to records
filed in court in June.

The investigators determined that a nonprofit organization called the
Foundation for Peace of Córdoba, seemingly set up to distribute farms to
landless peasants, was in reality a money-collecting front whose directors
and main benefactors were either paramilitary leaders or relatives,
according to court records. At least two other front companies - Compañía
Limited and Caheca Limited - worked with the foundation.

In three years the foundation managed more than $12 million, according to
the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador, the first to report some of the
investigation's findings.

The American investigator said, "It becomes hard to follow the funds when
they move through an apparently legal structure."

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery in the last few months of the
investigation is 200 tapes of phone conversations between paramilitary
leaders like Carlos Castaño and prominent citizens, say officials familiar
with the investigation.

In the ranch lands of southwestern Córdoba, people said raising money had
never been hard.

"The fund-raising for the paramilitaries is easy, simple," said one
prominent community leader. "They just go to Mr. So-and-So Rancher and say,
`Look, do you feel safe?' He'll say: `Yes, I do. I can come here with my
family.' They will then ask, `Well, please give us what you can.' "

Ms. Bolaños, the former paramilitary member, said the group used an office
solely to oversee the national collection of funds. But the various units
of the organization often determine how much residents will donate, often
depending on the size of a ranch. "I have visited commanders who do big
meetings with people who live in their region and they allow those people
to decide how much they give," Ms. Bolaños said.

In Córdoba most ranchers, civic leaders and other prominent people who
spoke about the organization recently said they had never given it money.
But most also lauded the group for undertaking a job they said the
government had long ignored. "We prefer to have the paramilitaries here,
and not the guerrillas," explained Luis Alfredo García, president of a
ranchers group, Ganacor, which was among the targets of the May raid. "That
does not mean that I am financing and helping the Self- Defense Forces."

When asked about documented cases of rights abuses committed by the
paramilitary forces, many said they believed that those killed had been
rebels, or that the violations had been committed by guerrillas, then
blamed on the paramilitaries.

"People here say we can go to our farms and sleep in peace, thanks to these
men," said Mr. García Caicedo, the rancher who acknowledged giving money in
the past. "If we do not cooperate with these people, what would happen to us?"