Colombian awaits US extradition in Argentina, accused of laundering billions in cocaine money

Argentina nabs alleged Colombian money launderer

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A suspected Colombian drug trafficker who operated under the radar for years in Argentina was described Friday as a ringleader capable of giving direct orders to Colombia’s most-wanted cocaine kingpins and with close ties to Mexico’s feared Sinaloa cartel.

Luis Caicedo Velandia was arrested as he walked near a Buenos Aires shopping mall April 12 and has been held under extremely high security, according to Argentine authorities, who did not reveal his capture until the United States formally filed a request for his extradition this week.

Caicedo, a former Colombian police official who carried a false Guatemalan passport, is responsible for moving tons of cocaine into the U.S. and laundering billions of dollars in profits, Argentine drug prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan told The Associated Press.

The arrest of Caicedo and three alleged co-conspirators in the United States and Colombia has exposed “one of the most powerful drug trafficking rings on the continent,” Oscar Naranjo, who directs Colombia’s national police force, told the AP in Bogota. Caicedo, he said, was “capable of giving direct orders” to Colombian cartel leaders.

Representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, the Justice Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington declined to comment on the indictment filed in New York City, saying it is a continuing investigation.

U.S. officials presented a case file more than 300 pages thick in support of his extradition, a process scheduled to begin within 10 days that can be appealed up to Argentina’s Supreme Court, Marijuan said.

According to Argentine and Colombian media, intelligence agencies from all three countries focused on Caicedo after containers were intercepted in the ports of Manzanillo, Mexico, and Buenaventura, Colombia, containing drug profits hidden among shipments of fertilizer. Caicedo’s phone calls were later intercepted, leading authorities to Buenos Aires, where he was quietly living under a Guatemalan alias in a gated suburban community.

Naranjo said Caicedo “represents a new generation of drug traffickers, characterized by their low profile,” in contrast to the infamous and flashy kingpins of Colombia’s past like deceased Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar. Caicedo, he said, “did everything differently: low profile, secrecy, orchestrating trafficking in obscurity.”

Caicedo, 43, retired from Colombia’s technical investigations force and was overseeing the shipment of drug profits by 2005, according to a report in the Argentine newspaper La Nacion.

Profits grew so huge that laundering it all became a difficult challenge, officials said.

“He moved around the continent, between Colombia, Peru, Argentina and the United States,” Naranjo said. “And we have evidence that he also had deep contacts with the Mexican mafia, and was quite connected to the organization of ‘Chapo’ Guzman,” the fugitive Sinaloa cartel leader.

Associated Press writers Cesar Garcia in Bogota, Colombia, and Bridget Huber in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.