CALI CARTEL STILL IN 'DRUG KINGPIN' BUSINESS, U.S. SAYS

WASHINGTON - The Cali Cartel, once the largest cocaine syndicate in the
world, may not have been entirely dismantled, as Colombian police officials
suggested in the mid-1990s.

The Treasury Department on Thursday said it had identified 59 companies and
78 individuals that are "acting as fronts for Colombia's Cali drug cartel
and are part of its international business and financial network operating
in Spain and Colombia."

Treasury prohibited all business with the companies and individuals.

Law enforcement officials made no arrests.

A senior Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the
cartel-related businesses laundered "multiple millions" of dollars in
Europe and that the Cali Cartel remains "a drug kingpin organization" of
"significant" size.

Pressure Boost

The announcement may boost pressure on Colombia to take action against
Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the drug baron who walked out of prison Nov. 7
after serving seven years of a 15-year prison term.

Prosecutors say Gilberto and brother Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, who remains
in a Colombian prison, once controlled as much as 80 percent of the world's
cocaine through their cartel. In Thursday's action, at least seven other
relatives of the brothers were listed as "specially designated narcotics
traffickers."

The branch of the Treasury Department dealing with economic sanctions
abroad, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, said it had uncovered a
"network" of drug cartel front companies in Spain and across Colombia. In
Madrid, the 10 companies included real estate firms, an Internet services
business, a graphic arts house, a coffee importer and a film distribution
firm, a Treasury statement said.

U.S. officials said they had identified 49 companies in Colombia, including
a series of pharmaceutical and cosmetic manufacturers and distributors led
by Drocard S.A., with offices in Bogota, the capital.

Drug Stores

As the cartel fell on hard times in the mid-1990s, its drug barons owned
Colombia's largest drugstore chain, Drogas La Rebaja, selling products
often at below cost to launder profits.

Led by suit-clad businessmen, 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. But
amid intense police persecution, all seven of the top Cali Cartel leaders
were either captured or turned themselves in for reduced prison terms by
early 1996. Experts say Colombia today has dozens of smaller trafficking
groups.

Treasury officials said seven relatives of the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers
owned or managed the network of businesses in Spain -- Humberto, Jaime and
Alexandra Rodriguez Mondragon, Claudia Pilar and Andre Gilberto Rodriguez
Ramirez, Juan Carlos Munoz Rodriguez and Maria Fernanda Rodriguez Arbelaez.

The Colombian businesses are mainly in Bogota and Cali. Others are in
Pereira, Manizales, Cucuta and Bucaramanga.

Despite imprisonment, the leaders of the Cali Cartel "tried to morph into
something new to escape detection and they've not been successful at doing
that," the Treasury official said.

A senior aide to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said prosecutors are
"continuously conducting a dragnet looking out for money laundering
activity" by jailed and freed drug barons.