FORMER 'KING OF COCAINE' DIES

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Roberto Suarez Gomez, a drug trafficker who called
himself the "King of Cocaine" and claimed to be the model for a
character in the movie "Scarface," has died from a heart attack, his
family said. He was 68.

Suarez Gomez, who died in the city of Santa Cruz on Thursday night,
was released from prison in 1996 after serving almost nine years for
drug crimes.

By his death, most of his vast fortune had dissipated and the one-time
drug lord said he was repentant. Suarez Gomez played a major role in
the expansion of cocaine trafficking in Bolivia, and gained notoriety
in 1983 when he offered to pay the country's foreign debt of $3
billion with proceeds from cocaine trafficking.

Suarez Gomez was born into a prominent ranching family in the tropical
Beni region. He became involved in cocaine trafficking in the
mid-1970s and early-1980s -a time when the cocaine trade in Bolivia
had taken off. In recent years, the government has made significant
inroads in destroying coca leaf, which is used to produce the drug.

Suarez Gomez said he became a millionaire seven months after going
into the cocaine business, and the money kept pouring in. He later
said he had accumulated $40 million from cocaine.

Suarez Gomez was also one of its main supporters of a military regime
that held power from 1980 to 1982, and he helped finance it.

During a prison interview with The Associated Press in 1998, he said
one of his dreams was to become a Hollywood actor. He often bragged
that he had been the model for a drug trafficker in the 1983 film
"Scarface" starring Al Pacino, the saga of a Cuban refugee who becomes
a cocaine kingpin in the United States.

Suarez Gomez's downfall came in 1988 when he was sentenced to 15 years
for drug crimes. He was released early, in 1996.

His nephew, Jorge Roca Suarez, took over the drug business, and was
arrested several years ago in the United States, where he is serving a
long sentence for trafficking cocaine.

Suarez Gomez claimed to have found faith in prison, and often posed
next to a poster of Jesus Christ that hung on his jail wall.

In a TV interview weeks before his death, he expressed remorse about
his life of crime.

"The worst mistake I ever made in my life was to have gotten involved
in cocaine trafficking," Suarez Gomez told the local TV station.

Suarez Gomez's lawyer, Maria Teresa Montano, said he had 18 children
from several different wives. His last wife deserted him some time
ago.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.