COLOMBIAN COCAINE GANGS LINKED TO AIRCRAFT PARTS SCAM

Investigations into a scam involving the sale of faulty, second-hand
aircraft parts have widened to Colombian drug cartels after the US
Congress heard reports that gangs were moving from cocaine trafficking
to this more lucrative line of business.

It emerged earlier this week that as many as 10 recent air crashes
could have been caused by old parts being sold as new to unwitting
airlines.

The FBI has reportedly sent its own investigators to look into links
to the crash of the American Airlines Airbus in New York in November,
in which 265 people died.

American Airlines yesterday said it had double-checked the source of
its aircraft parts and had no reason to believe itself a victim of the
scam. John Hotard, a spokesman for the company, said: "Every part we
buy has a paper trail and we only use vendors that we know and audit
on a regular basis."

Information on the role that Colombian gangs might be playing emerged
in evidence given to the US Congress by an official of the department
of transport, according to Italian investigators. The tip was
subsequently passed to investigators in Sardinia who have discovered a
flourishing trade in bogus aircraft parts.

"The official said the drug traffickers had given up cocaine smuggling
in order to enter the aircraft parts market," said Major Anselmo
Mocci, an officer in the Sardinian finance police. "The business was
more profitable than cocaine trafficking and obviously much less dangerous."

The US Federal Aviation Administration has issued a warning to 167
countries over the potential dangers of the spare parts network. Much
of the focus is on small airlines, which may try to economise by
buying used parts from brokers instead of ordering them new from the
manufacturers.

Alarms about the possible involvement of the drug cartels in the
aircraft parts market were raised recently in the Italian parliament.
In a question to the minister for the secret services, the senator
Aventino Frau said: "The international traffic in aircraft spare parts
could be connected with or used for purposes of terrorism or sabotage.
I would like to know whether our intelligence services have been activated."

There were raids by Italian police on several warehouses in Naples and
Rome at the weekend, which led to six arrests and the seizure of a
consignment of aircraft parts.

Some of the parts - which may have been recovered from an earlier
aircraft crash - were accompanied by falsified certificates vouching
for their efficiency.

Investigators in Sardinia have reportedly uncovered four secret bank
accounts in Austria which they believe were used to handle bribes paid
to airline employees and civil aviation officials. They arrested
several people, including Pietro Paolo Corrias, the acquisitions
director of the Italian airline Meridiana. He is accused of having
demanded a 7% commission on purchases of used parts for his airline.