BOGOTA, (Reuters) – Colombia has seized a bounty of assets including luxury cars and real state that belonged to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, which dominates drug trafficking into the United States, police in the Andean nation said yesterday.
Colombia, one of the biggest cocaine exporters, has made strides in recent years against Marxist guerrillas and paramilitary groups that finance themselves with drug sales. Some of them have strong ties with Mexican drug cartels.
The 58 confiscated assets, including 36 houses and apartments, 15 companies and six luxury cars, belonged to Antonio Bermudez, a former “right-hand man” of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, according to Colombian police.
The seizure could hurt the finances of El Chapo – as the Sinaloa cartel leader is known -, who became a household name when he escaped a Mexican maximum security prison in a laundry cart in 2001.
“This is one of the biggest blows against criminal organizations,” said General Jose Roberto Leon, deputy director of the Colombian police force. “This was an operation against the side of drug trafficking that deals with investments in the legal economy.”
Police footage showed a lavishly decorated country home with a swimming pool. The seizure of assets, valued at about $15 million, followed the expropriation in 2010 of 264 Sinaloa-owned goods valued at some $85 million.
The assets were found in the Colombian cities of Medellin, Bogota, Cali and several towns in the northern Antioquia region, police said.
The investigation that led to the seizure was carried out by Colombian police, the Colombian attorney general’s office and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Colombia has benefited from billions of dollars in U.S. aid that has allowed it to cripple illegal armed groups.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon pledged upon taking office in 2006 to defeat drug cartels operating in Mexico. But the cartels have continued to thrive during a war that has seen widespread drug-related violence and the deaths of more than 50,000 people.
The U.S. government has offered a $5 million award for information leading to the capture of El Chapo – Spanish for “Shorty” -, who is ranked on Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful people.
Bermudez is a Colombian citizen described by police as Guzman’s top lieutenant. He was arrested in Mexico in 2008 and is imprisoned in the United States.
