MONEY RETURNED TO COLOMBIA BY BOAT AND BY BANK

How do you smuggle millions in illegal drug profits from the United
States to Colombia?

In small airplanes, or in speedboats, or in metal shipping containers
carried by freighters. Stuffed in suitcases, or wrapped in plastic and
tightly packed in boxes.

Or, when all else fails, by hiring the best money launderer you know
to run the cash through a complex web of runners and others using real
and fake companies in the United States and offshore.

That's how the men at the top of the Cali cocaine cartel did it,
according to an FBI affidavit recently obtained by The Tampa Tribune,
which details an international operation aimed at breaking up the
cartel. The investigation, being run from Tampa, is code-named
Operation Panama Express and is one of the biggest in U.S. history.

Prosecutors filed the 139- page document to get an arrest warrant for
Joaquin Mario Valencia-Trujillo, who is accused of leading the Cali
cartel and being one Colombia's most powerful drug lords. Agents say
he was in the same league as Pablo Escobar, once head of the rival
Medellin cartel. Escobar was killed by police in 1993.

Valencia is awaiting trial in Tampa on federal racketeering, money
laundering and drug conspiracy charges.

By Sea And Air

At first, Valencia - who ran a large paper company in Colombia -
smuggled the cash to Cali from the United States in two legs, the
affidavit states.

It would be moved from Miami to Panama, a country whose secretive
banking laws often are compared to Switzerland's, inside shipments of
commercial paper products, the affidavit continues. Then small planes
would fly the money from Panama to Colombia.

But the aircraft were easy to spot, the affidavit states, so eventually
Valencia turned to the two men who were smuggling the cartel's cocaine
to North America by way of fishing boats plying the eastern Pacific
Ocean: Jose Castrillon- Henao and Pedro Navarrete.

Castrillon ran a fishing company in Buenaventura, Colombia. He made
Navarrete his partner in 1991. He retired in 1996 and took some
assets, leaving Navarrete in charge of the business. Both have pleaded
guilty in the Panama Express case. Castrillon is now a government
witness thought to be in the witness protection program; Navarrete is
to be sentenced next month.

This is what happened, the affidavit states:

Valencia told Castrillon that he wanted to try ferrying the money from
Panama to Colombia the same way the cocaine was leaving: by boat. He
put Castrillon with a Panamanian money launderer. In a single month,
they moved about $15 million from Panama to Colombia aboard a twin-
engine diesel speedboat.

The Panamanian connection worked from late 1990 until 1992, when
Panamanian customs agents found some boxes hidden in a Miami-to-
Panama shipment of paper. The boxes weren't on the shipping bill, so
the agents opened them and found $2.3 million in cash.

The Panamanians alerted U.S. authorities, who soon discovered that a
second shipment was en route to Panama. The Panamanians seized it,
too: $4.8 million in cash.

Next, Valencia switched to a Mexican money launderer, but he soon was
caught.

By Money Order

According to the affidavit, Valencia told Castrillon and Navarrete
that from then on they would have had to get their share of the drug
money - as much as $2 million a shipment - from the United States to
Colombia on their own.

It would be left with an intermediary, usually in New York or Miami.
Valencia would give them a name and address. Then another intermediary
would make the pickup.

To get it out of the United States, the affidavit continues, they
hired a man regarded by Colombia's drug lords as a master money
launderer, Jose Issa Nasser.

Nasser allegedly set up a series of fake companies in the British
Virgin Islands. Then he opened checking accounts in the names of these
companies at banks in South Florida, the affidavit states, and even
seduced a bank officer at a branch in Coral Gables and persuaded her
to help him.

Next, Nasser sent runners across South Florida with relatively small
amounts of cash, usually about $40,000, the affidavit states. The
runners bought money orders at check-cashing stores, American Express,
Circle Ks, 7-Elevens and post offices. The money orders were deposited
into the accounts of the shell companies.

Checks then were written on the accounts to companies Castrillon and
Navarrete owned or controlled.

Nasser is accused of laundering millions for Castrillon and Navarrete,
charging them 10 percent. Agents still are looking for him; he
vanished as Panama Express began to produce arrests.