We all know this will never happen with Obungler, unless he’s forced to (kicking and screaming, like the liberal sissy he is) but signs are pointing to the fact, as reported by U.S. federal investigators, that Hugo Chavez is as deeply, if not more, involved in trafficking narcotics not only to the U.S., as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was two decades ago, but also to Europe (which Manuel Noriega was never accused of), when President George H.W. Bush decided it was time to remove yet another central American tinpot dictator.
Newsmax has an excellent article about central American drug cartels attempting to buy large aircraft to transport narcotics to Europe.
And what’s the one common denominator in this article, you might ask?
The involvement of narcotic traffickers and criminals from or based in Venezuela, from Columbia and other central American countries.
And since anyone with half a brain knows that virtually nothing happens in Venezuela without the approval of Chavez or his stooges, there’s almost no doubt that they’ve given the green light to conduct this illicit activity.
US: Gangs Buy Jets for Trans-Atlantic Coke Flights
Federal investigators are piecing together details of an audacious new trend in drug smuggling: South American gangs are buying old jets, stuffing them full of cocaine and flying them across the Atlantic to feed Europe’s growing coke habit.
At least three gangs have struck deals to fly drugs to West Africa and from there to Europe, according to U.S. indictments. One trafficker claimed he already had six aircraft flying. Another said he was managing five airplanes. Because there is no radar coverage over the ocean, big planes can cross the Atlantic virtually undetected.
“The sky’s the limit,” one Sierra Leone trafficker boasted to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant, according to court documents.
[…]
In some cases, executive jets have been used, including a Gulfstream II that landed in Guinea-Bissau in 2008 and another Gulfstream seized in 2007 as it tried to depart Venezuela for Sierra Leone.
In the last year, a flurry of arrests has begun shedding light on how the air routes work. The cases are being prosecuted in a New York federal court because some of the cocaine was supposed to have been sent to the United States.
“The quantity of cocaine distributed and the means employed to distribute it were extraordinary,” prosecutors wrote in one case. They warned of a conspiracy to “spread vast quantities of cocaine throughout the world by way of cargo airplanes.”
In some ways it is a throwback to the 1970s and ’80s, when drug pilots flew freely between Colombia and staging areas near the U.S. border, Decker said. Back then, drug lords such as Amado Carrillo, nicknamed The Lord of the Skies, sent jets with as much as 15 tons of cocaine from Colombia to northern Mexico.
Recent U.S. court cases involving trans-Atlantic flights include:
— The Valencia-Arbelaez Organization, broken up by undercover U.S. agents after it bought a $2 million plane to run monthly flights between Venezuela and Guinea. The group claimed to have six aircraft already flying between South America and West Africa.
— A ring based in Colombia and Liberia, arrested after one of its planes was seized in May with two tons of cocaine as it prepared to leave Venezuela. Prosecutors say the group was planning to fly jets twice a month. One defendant claimed to manage five other aircraft making similar hauls.
— Three Sierra Leone men, accused of scouting out airstrips and arranging for a four-ton flight of cocaine from South America in March.
Two other recent cases have involved cocaine and cargo jets, though investigators have not revealed yet whether the flights were going to Africa:
— Francisco Gonzalez Uribe, a Colombian trafficker due to be sentenced this month. Gonzalez Uribe was recorded while trying to purchase large aircraft including a DC-8, a four-engine jet.
— Walid Makled-Garcia, who prosecutors say controlled airstrips in Venezuela used to launch drug flights. Prosecutors say Makled-Garcia was behind one of the biggest drug plane shipments in recent years: a DC-9 that landed in Mexico in 2006 with more than 12,300 pounds of cocaine on board.
All five cases are being prosecuted in a federal court in Manhattan.
[…]
Read the rest of the article here…
Tags: Hugo Chavez
