Petro And Sinaloa Cartel Connection, Riva Palacio Reveals

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

An intelligence report by Colombia's Ministry of Defense detected the arrival of the Sinaloa Cartel in 2018 with the aim of controlling the transportation and distribution of drugs in the Americas and Europe

DRUG TRAFFICKING COLOMBIA

Last July, Colombia's Attorney General's Office reported the arrest of Nicolás Petro, son of current president Gustavo Petro Urrego, who is accused of money laundering and illicit enrichment. Nicolás Petro's case had begun in March this year when Daysuris Vásquez, his ex-wife accused him of having received money from drug cartels to finance his father's presidential campaign.

This Tuesday in Eje Central in his column Estrictamente Personal, journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio writes that Nicolás Petro had links with drug trafficking and part of the money destined to his father's campaign came from a drug business. Although at the time of his arrest, the son of the Colombian president said that his father did not know the origin of the resources.

However, the issue of illegal financing in Petro's campaign has been a topic of conversation in the Colombian press prior to the trial of Nicolás Petro scheduled for next month, according to audios leaked by Semana magazine of the president's former private secretary, Armando Benedetti, there was income 300% higher than the legal ceiling, while the portal La Silla Vacía revealed that of the 70 thousand poll watchers sent by Petro on Election Day 2022, all were paid with money that was not reported.

Suspicions of illegal money in the campaign begin in Barranquilla, where they arrested his son and his ex-wife, gateway of the Sinaloa cartel to Colombia, according to an intelligence report of the Ministry of Defense was in 2018 when the Sinaloa group arrived in the country, this a month before Iván Duque assumed the Presidency, the objective of controlling the transport and distribution of drugs in America and Europe.

Operation the Sinaloa Cartel in Colombia.

The presence of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and "Los Chapitos" in Colombia began with the dispatch of their main lieutenants to expand their operations, especially in the area where cocaine is produced, to obtain more competitive prices and ensure the logistics of distribution. The Sinaloa cartel expanded its operations to the ports of Cartagena, south of Barranquilla, and Santa Martha, the country's main port, where all the Caribbean cruise ships arrive, establishing a relationship with local criminal groups that controlled micro drug trafficking.

The logistics of the Sinaloa Cartel in Colombia, as in Mexico, took place by pressuring and threatening leaders in Barranquilla and bribing authorities to control the port infrastructure and free trade zones on the Atlantic coast, while buying businesses to launder money and opening others, while those who resisted were brutally subdued by Medellin hitmen, paving the way to begin exporting drugs to Portugal, Africa and Cape Verde, on the Senegal peninsula and to the Azores Islands, an autonomous Portuguese region.

All this under the command of a Mexican lawyer identified in intelligence reports with the initials ADR, who has an office in Durango and is a key figure within the Sinaloa cartel due to the health problems faced by "El Mayo" Zambada.

The lawyer ADR is a representative of Los Cabrera, the armed wing of "El Mayo", which operates in Durango and Chihuahua under the command of José Luis Cabrera Sarabia, "El Chepe".

The lawyer's name appears in a hack that the Guacamaya Leaks group made to the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), where it is mentioned in the Colombian military intelligence document and indicates that Zambada and "Los Chapitos" opened maritime routes to the Yucatan Peninsula and Europe, where ADR played an important role in the logistics, using tuna boats with Mexican and Panamanian flags to traffic drugs for the Sinaloa cartel.

La Silla Rota  Borderland Beat Archives