Russia criminals aid Colombia drug lords
Access to Europe helping cartels stage a comeback, authorities say

By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News

BOGOTA, Colombia Bolstered by expanding alliances with Russian organized
crime, Colombia's oncebeleaguered drug cartels are staging a rapid
comeback, opening vast trafficking markets across Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union, officials and narcotics experts say.

The alliances have introduced Colombian traffickers to millions of
potential cocaine and heroin consumers, helping compensate the drug cartels
for North American turf battles they have lost in recent years to Mexican
groups.

The expanded markets also have bolstered the smaller, more violent
Colombian groups that rose to power after the demise of the Medellin drug
cartel and the arrest of top Cali cartel leaders over the past three years,
the officials say.

The Russian crime gangs are making available to their Colombian partners a
vast array of weaponry, expertise and intelligencegathering equipment. The
Colombians, in turn, appear to be advising their Russian counterparts on
techniques for laundering billions of dollars in profits from illegal
enterprises.

The effect of the alliance has been to create an even more formidable,
global Colombian drug threat than existed previously, the officials said.

"Cocaine is coming to Russia in big shipments, and we know they [the
Colombians] could not do it without help from the Russian mafia," said
Ednan Agaev, the Russian ambassador to Colombia.

"I have been warning about this since the day I arrived here" three years
ago, Mr. Agaev added. "In that time, 50 tons of Colombian cocaine have been
seized in Russia. That's just what was seized, so it shows the dimension of
the threat we're facing."

FBI Director Louis Freeh echoed those concerns last week during
congressional testimony in which he warned that ties between two of the
world's richest and most powerful organized crime groups "are growing and,
I think, very dangerous."

Together, Colombian and Russian organized crime are believed to control the
lion's share of a $400 billion worldwide illicit drug market. Mr. Freeh
said that figure amounts to 8 percent of the world economy.

Colombia remains the primary source country for cocaine entering the United
States, but Mexican cartels in recent years have gained control of up to 70
percent of U.S.bound smuggling routes and distribution outlets.
Antinarcotics officials say the Mexican cartels' demands for an
increasingly large share of the profits from U.S. sales helped drive the
Colombian expansion into other markets where the Mexicans cannot compete.

Whereas Colombian and Russian crime groups previously have operated as
fractious, sometimes competing organizations, their new alliances mark the
formation of what some observers call "global cartels," whose economic
power eclipses that of many nations.

"What all of this tells us is, in the interests of global business, these
groups will soon cross a threshold of compartmentalization, will begin
merging and are working jointly with one another. Its sophisticated and
highly disciplined managers view crime as an investment, indeed, an export
commodity," Rep. Benjamin Gilman, RN.Y., said at a House International
Relations Committee hearing last week on organized crime.

"These new global cartels could ultimately be capable of buying entire
governments, commercial trade zones in emerging democracies and eventually
undermining established Western markets and the stable world financial
commercial trading systems," he said.

For Colombian organizations, the new alliances serve as a shot in the arm
after years of setbacks that included the imprisonment of top cartel
leaders, the deaths of others, and the loss of huge U.S. cocaine markets to
the Mexican cartels.

"It's just a whole new realm, a whole new market for them," said Joe Toft,
former Colombia station chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Penetrating the Russian and East European markets "was a huge bonanza for
the trafficking organizations. Frankly, I'm a little surprised it has taken
them this long."

Col. Leonardo Gallego, commander of Colombia's national antinarcotics
police, said his agents have been tracking efforts by Russian mafia figures
to import Colombian cocaine and heroin into the former Soviet bloc since
1995. In most cases, the Russians have employed "mules" airline or boat
passengers paid to transport bulk quantities of the drugs in their luggage
or by ingesting them in condoms.

Today, according to various sources, Colombian and Russian smugglers are
employing far more innovative techniques. In the northern Caribbean port
town of Turbo, Colombian smugglers reportedly have sewn 1kilogram
(2.2pound) packets of cocaine into the linings of leather jackets exported
to Russia. Another technique is to stash drugs inside shipments of coffee
or flowers.

"There is an enormous market for [Colombian] flowers in Russia. We know the
cartels are putting the cocaine into rose shipments because it's such a
timesensitive export commodity," Mr. Agaev said. "Nobody wants to hold up
a shipment of flowers [at customs] for a drug inspection, so they clear
them through quickly."

Col. Gallego said the preferred smuggling routes to Russia include South
American ports in Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela and, in Europe, ports in
Italy, Sweden and Finland. Strong evidence has emerged to suggest the
Italian mafia has joined the ColombianRussian alliance.

What makes this new group so formidable, Mr. Freeh indicated, is the sheer
number of Russian foot soldiers now available to assist the Colombians.

"We have, for instance, in the United States approximately 24 organized
crime families, traditional La Cosa Nostra [Italian mafia] families that we
have identified which are composed of about 2,000 active members," Mr.
Freeh said. "The Russian Ministry of the Interior has estimated that, with
respect to Russian organized crime groups, they number . . . some 100,000
members. Thirty of those groups are active in other countries, including
the United States."

Not only are Colombian traffickers establishing new sources of profits from
the alliance, they reportedly are receiving bulk quantities of arms in
exchange for drugs mostly rifles and machine guns but also some more
sophisticated devices such as shoulderfired antiaircraft rockets,
officials and experts say.

Russian arms have begun showing up in port towns like Turbo, which is
controlled by paramilitary groups who, according to Col. Gallego, are
helping protect laboratories and clandestine airstrips used by drug
traffickers.

"I went down to the port to buy a bicycle one day, and I noticed that the
box seemed a little heavy," said the Rev. Fabian Quintero, a Roman Catholic
priest in Turbo. "When I got home and opened the box, I pulled out two
machine guns along with the bike. The guns are everywhere. They're coming
in every day."

None of the officials could confirm a recent Washington Post report
asserting that Colombians had attempted to purchase a Russian Tangoclass
submarine, although Col. Gallego said Colombian traffickers have had small
"submersible" vehicles at their disposal for years.

Mr. Agaev called the submarine report "pure fantasy," designed for "maximum
shock value, like what you see in a James Bond movie. The reality is more
gray than that less clear, less obvious, but just as dangerous."

The far greater threat, he said, is that Colombian cartels appear to be
drawing on the expertise of former KGB intelligence agents now employed by
the Russian mafia.

"During the years of authoritarian rule, there was such an obsession with
intelligencegathering and counterintelligence in the Soviet Union that we
developed very sophisticated equipment and surveillance techniques. We know
they have access to the production of this equipment," Mr. Agaev said. "If
it falls into the wrong hands, it could be very deadly."

One U.S. intelligence official said major Colombian cartels have
restructured themselves in recent years to mirror the celllike structure
once employed by the KGB, apparently on the advice of former KGB agents and
exoperatives of the Israeli Mossad.

Former and current DEA agents say the cartels' intelligencegathering
capability has severely hampered the DEA's ability to plan and launch
antinarcotics operations. They say the DEA does not allow any substantive
conversations to occur on telephone lines even if the lines are believed
to be secure.

"I know my lines are tapped, not by one but probably several different
groups," one international law enforcement officer said.

In one infamous case, a U.S. intelligence official said, Colombian drug
traffickers demonstrated their ability to penetrate DEA communications by
intercepting cellular phone calls by DEA agents in the United States,
decoding their cellular phone numbers, then charging hundreds of thousands
of dollars worth of international longdistance calls to those same phone
numbers.

The DEA ended up footing the phone bill for Colombian traffickers to set up
drug deals, the official said.