Valencia Convicted

The acting director of the DEA, Michele Leonhart said in reference to Jesus Eduardo Valencia Arbelaez that "we have put behind bars at one of the biggest drug traffickers, which has orchestrated massive smuggling operations." (AP)

Manhattan U.S. Attorney, Bhar Preet, reported that the head of a vast organization based in Colombia and Venezuela, had pleaded guilty and "now faces severe consequences of exploiting West African countries for their own enrichment .

Last September, Valencia, 45, was extradited to the U.S. from Romania charged with drug trafficking and money laundering, according to the prosecution.

The man was arrested in June 2009 in Bucharest, where he had traveled to study with other accomplices to establish a base for his band, which also offended in countries such as Bolivia, Spain, Netherlands, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Mauritania and United States.

In the two years prior to his arrest, Valencia and other accomplices tried to buy an airplane to transport tons of cocaine from Venezuela to several African countries, according to the prosecutor detailed in a statement.

Manuel Silva Jaramillo, organized several meetings in Madrid, New York and Virginia (USA), among other places, and prepared to finance the purchase of the aircraft through a Cyprus company.

In October 2007, Silva Jaramillo gave instructions to transfer more than 1.25 million euros in cash, from drug trafficking operations, to various accounts in the United States.

The prosecutor explained that one of the meetings held to arrange the purchase, Silva said the available band between 30 and 60 million euros in Spain to launder needed.

In November 2008, Valencia met in Madrid with a confidant of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Jaramillo Silva helped in the purchase of the aircraft. Valence said his organization could send shipments of cocaine from Venezuela to Guinea, where he had braces and a private airfield.

In January 2009 Valencia returned to meet with the undercover DEA, who explained that the band was considering to ship cocaine from Bolivia to West Africa.

Also made arrangements for the other person received 250,000 euros in cash as part of the aircraft acquisition process. Valencia was arrested a fifth member of this organization, as the prosecutor.

Bhar explained that Geraldo Quintana Perez Perez and Steve Harvey were sent from Sierra Leone to New York in April 2009, in what was the first collaboration of its kind between the two countries.

Later, Javier Caro was awarded in June of that year by the Togolese authorities to the U.S..


For his part, Silva Jaramillo was arrested that same month after visiting the Dominican Republic after he pleaded guilty, so is waiting to learn his sentence.

"International networks of drug dealing increasingly used over West Africa as a hub for their illegal activities," lamented today Bhar.

He said, however, "operating in several continents and try to increase the scope of their criminal activities, drug traffickers are most vulnerable to the efforts of cooperation between U.S. authorities and their partners."

The acting director of the DEA, Michele Leonhart, said in reference to Valencia Arbelaez that "we have put behind bars at one of the biggest drug traffickers, which has orchestrated massive smuggling operations."

The Rest @ Que en Espana.

International Criminal -Terrorist World Business Network

The DEA and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York have unveiled a new indictment for drug trafficking that shows just how truly transnational and intertwined with terrorists, aircraft merchants, and little-scrutinized company registries these groups have become.


The case centers on Jesus Eduardo Valencia-Arbelaez, aka "Padre," aka "Pat," who was extradited from Romania to stand trial for drug trafficking and money laundering. I think these two paragraphs sums up the huge challenges faced with these organizations that have now grown tentacles around the world. Plotting this on a map would help give the true dimensions of the enterprise.


Valencia-Arbelaez was a leader of a sophisticated international cocainetrafficking organization (the Organization) based in Colombia and Venezuela that operated worldwide, including in Bolivia, Spain, Holland, Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, Mauritania, Mali, Cyprus, and the United States.

• Beginning in September 2007, members of the Organization sought to purchase a cargo airplane for the purpose of transporting metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa.


• Between September 2007 and March 2009, Manuel Silva-Jaramillo, a member of the Organization arrested earlier this year, conducted meetings in connection with the Organization's efforts to acquire the airplane in, among other places, Madrid, New York and Virginia.


• Silva-Jaramillo arranged to finance the purchase of the airplane through a corporation based in Cyprus and to register it in Sierra Leone.

It would be incorrect to assume the Organization has an organic structure in each of the countries named. Rather, it has carved out important links to existing criminal organizations there, and have key operatives in the country or region to keep an eye on the operations and collect or pay money, as necessary.


But it does show a remarkable integration across four continents and the ability to manage multiple moving pieces. It also shows how mobile the Organization's key personnel are.

• Valencia-Arbelaez was arrested in Romania, where he had gone to further discuss the purchase of aircraft for his organization.


• Unfortunately, Viktor Bout, denied bail yesterday by a Thai judge, was unavailable for business.

This case follows closely on another one where the DEA, using the tried and true uncover tactic of pretending to be buying weapons for the FARC in Colombia, captured a former Syrian military officer in Honduras, purporting to have weapons obtained from Hezbollah to sell on the international market.

• Jamal Yousef, aka "Talal Hassan Ghantou," an international arms trafficker, was charged with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

What is interesting about the case is that it was to be a transcontinental weapons for cocaine trade. While such trades are reported anecdotally, there has been little first-hand evidence of this type of activity among designated terrorist organizations.

So, we have a Syrian in Honduras offering to sell Hezbollah weapons stashed in Mexico, reportedly stolen from Iraq.

Again, the geographic space in the operation is significant and, until fairly recently, an insurmountable obstacle.

The silver lining in this is that the arrests were made. It is a part of the shifting tactics of the DEA and others to target the "shadow facilitators" like Yousef who have access to different criminal and terrorist networks and broker the deals that are profitable to all.

But the scary part is just how far-flung and inter-active these groups have become. Globalization and market forces at their best.

Douglas Farah is the president of IBI Consultants and a Senior Fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. He is a national security consultant and analyst.

In 2004 he worked for nine months with the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, studying armed groups and intelligence reform. For the two decades before that, he was a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for the Washington Post and other publications, covering Latin America and West Africa.

The Rest @ Douglas Farah by way of Rightside News

Good work, Doug

Cyrpuse Halts Iranina Arms Shipment to Syria

Cyprus stops Iranian arms shipment bound for Syria

01/31/2009: Haaretz and Reuters report that the Cyprus-flagged "Monchegorsk" en route from Iran carrying arms to Syria, which likely

... was the same ship the US navy detained and released on Tuesday,.....

was halted by Cypriot authorities after Israeli and US officials requested that the Cypriot government halt the ship, according to a confidential European Union diplomatic source.

Cypriot authorities had demanded that the ship dock in Limassol for inspection, and once docked, from the ship were unloaded artillery rounds and rockets, among other weapons.

January 31, 2009 at 08:00 AM

The Rest @ Secutiy Law Brief