The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE), estimated the cartel, named El Dorado, made $5 billion profit from their trade over the past few years.
Agents involved in Operation Pacific Rim alleged on Friday that the gang trafficked cocaine to every continent except Antarctica, with drugs bound for Europe and Britain smuggled through Spain.
They believe the gang were responsible for almost half of the cocaine on American streets, or more than 912 tonnes with an estimated street value of more than $24 billion.
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This is stunning news, and I am floored that this is not getting the attention it deserves. I know the whole McChrystal thing or the Gulf spill is hogging all the news right now, but this is some news of actual success in that other war we are fighting in. This bust is like taking down the Walmart of cartels. We will see what players step up to fill that gap, but still, this is huge.
That is the other part of this that is intriguing, and that is the second and third order effects from something like this. Often when you kill the big dog, the dogs in the pack fight for the new position. They also kill off any traces of the old dog, just to establish pure dominance and the new command. It is a brutal fight and there will always be an alpha dog that comes up from that process. So how ICE is able to take advantage of this chaos within the drug market will be interesting to watch. Stand by for some battles over that territory.
I also think that the money taken in these raids should be going towards a bounty system, along with funding the law enforcement agencies involved. We should see way more money being offered in the reward programs, and the wanted list should also include way more people. It is also important to note that ICE does have a ‘prize‘ system in place within the the law enforcement realm.
With the current arrangement at ICE, there is an incentive attached to the process of taking down these cartels. ICE has a deal called the Asset Forfeiture/Equitable Sharing program. It is a way to reward police agencies that cooperate with ICE in their operations, and they basically get to ‘split the prize’. That can be a lot of money to split, and just look at the numbers in the quote up top! If this program was opened up to include ‘licensed’ and bonded companies or individuals, they too could take part in that prize system and this would dramatically expand the program.
We already have the Rewards For Justice Program, yet only law enforcement agencies get to claim prizes after captures? I say open it up to private industry and lets get this business of eradicating drug cartels started. And believe me, there are plenty of drug cartels, terrorists, and pirates for militaries, police departments and private industry to go after.-Matt
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ICE takes down billion-dollar Colombian drug trafficking organization
June 18, 2010
DTO finances its illicit empire by sending cocaine all over the globe
In Operation Pacific Rim, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), working closely with the Colombian National Police and Mexican authorities, took down a major drug trafficking organization — an industrial and transportation empire with a profit margin in the billions. The drug kingpins operating out of Colombia wrestled with a vexing problem — they made so much money from illegal narcotics trafficking that they couldn’t launder it all.
In fact, tracking the cold hard cash is one of the specialties of ICE’s investigative directorate, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). HSI is the largest investigative agency within the Department of Homeland Security. HSI agents working with ICE Attaché offices in Bogota and elsewhere brought this giant among drug organizations to its knees. HSI began Operation Pacific Rim in September 2009 after scoring a previous victory in an investigation where they seized $41 million in Colombia and Mexico. This is often the case in federal law enforcement, with one case that tips investigators off to an even bigger fish to fry.
