215. La Familia has developed certain parallel state functions in Mexico. See Grayson, Familia Drug Cartel, viii, 61–62. In Honduras drug money was involved in the 1978 coup and 1984 attempted coup. However, the extent of penetration by Honduran traffickers and of their ambitions may be distinguished from Bolivia’s cocaine coup of 1980, sometimes characterized as a cartel buying an entire government. See Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 54, and Shannon, Desperados, 475.
216. Garzón, Mafia and Co., 29, and Bagley, “Dateline Drug Wars,” 158.
217. Here, we paraphrase Thoumi in Political Economy, 141.
218. For information on sicarios, see Duzán, Death Beat, 202–15; Salazar, No nacimos pa’ semilla; and Krauthausen and Sarmiento, Cocaína y Co., 85–90.
219. In 2009 Costa Rica’s chief prosecutor, Francisco Dall’Anese, observed, “The truth is we have cases of hit men every day.” “Dall’Anese: It’s Easy to Traffic Drugs Here,” TT (CR), 30 January 2009, 2. For the downfall in a Honduran DEA operation of alleged Medellín assassin Guillermo León Velásquez, suspected of seven Florida killings and others in Colombia, see “Capturan en Tegucigalpa pistolero del ‘Cartel,’” Tiempo (Honduras), 18 May 1990, 3.
220. Andreas, Border Games, 23.
221. For the statement of Ana Martes, former director of prosecutors, Colombian Attorney General’s Office, see “Por la fuga de dos extranjeras suspenden a director del COF,” SV (GU), 25 June 1996, 12.
222. As the Eleventh Circuit explained, “A ‘broker’ in the drug trade is a middle-man who for a fee will take on a consignment basis large shipments of drugs smuggled into this country to find a buyer for them.” United States v. Corona, 885 F.2d 766. See also Decker and Chapman, Drug Smugglers, 39–45, 55–56, and Levine, Big White Lie, 150. For the operations of one Cali cocaine broker, see Huff affidavit, 45–47.
223. See, for instance, United States v. Torres-Teyer, 322 F. Supp. 2d at 365. A New York federal court declared, “[Jorge] Torres-Teyer quite literally organized the Belizean trans-shipment operation. . . . He did not act as a mere manager or supervisor, but as a high-level operative who recruited, supervised, and directed dozens of individuals and organized their activity.”
224. United States v. Mejia, 448 F.3d at 447.
225. See U.S. Senate, Drug Cartels, 42. For compartmentalization in a Colombian cartel’s New York distribution network, see Natarajan, “Understanding the Structure,” 273–98.
226. Bank employees, particularly those evaluated on the daily number of clients serviced, have sometimes failed to record electronic-transfer data conscientiously.
227. Loría Quirós, Caro Quintero, 244, 247–50.
228. Lee, “Transnational Organized Crime,” 17.
229. For one case of a Costa Rican arrested after transferring property to a shell company, see “Detienan a abogados,” LN (CR), 23 September 1998, 10A.
230. Confidential interview with official, May 1990, San José, Costa Rica.
231. See, for instance, “En fuga abogado de Mario Valverde,” LN (CR), 13 March 1997, 5A.
232. For instance, Guatemalan attorney Javier Barba Hernández, eventually killed in a shoot-out with Mexican police, was a reputed executioner for the Guadalajara cartel. Shannon, Desperados, 280, 448. A prominent Mexican defense lawyer showed a British journalist the U.S.-manufactured grenades that narcotics suspects had given him in lieu of pay. “Conspiracy to Corrupt,” 1.
233. In particular, Cali employees were supposed to sign sworn affidavits, soon after arrest, “disavowing knowledge of, or involvement with, [Miguel] Rodríguez-Orejuela.” United States v. Abbell, 271 F.3d at 1291. For cases involving confidential informants against Cali traffickers intimidated into stopping their cooperation, see Chepesiuk, Drug Lords, 156–57; United States v. Orjuela [sic], 809 F. Supp. at 196; and “Cartel’s Lawyers, Legal Profession Also on Trial in Miami,” SPT (US), 1 August 1995, 1A.
234. United States v. Abbell, 271 F.3d at 1291. See also Huff affidavit, 111.
235. United States v. Abbell, 271 F.3d at 1294. The Harvard-educated Michael Abbell, former prosecutor for the Department of Justice, was eventually convicted of money laundering for major Cali traffickers. See Chepesiuk, Drug Lords, 163.
236. The U.S. government was not alone in publicly condemning lackluster performance. In 2001 the Grupo de Acción Financiera Internacional (GAFI) blacklisted Panama for failing to cooperate against laundering, and in 2007 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development greylisted Panama for withholding financial information. “Gobierno panameño se reúne hoy con funcionarios antinarcóticos de EU,” LP (PA), 4 January 2001, 2A; “Panamá y EU firman acuerdo,” LP (PA), 1 December 2010, 1A.
237. See Lee, White Labyrinth, xiv.
238. For discussions of the certification process, see Crandall, Driven by Drugs, 38–40, and “The Process Has Become an Annual Charade,” WP (US), 21 March 1999, B3.
239. See Thoumi, “Illegal Drug Industry.”
240. For the alleged terms of one DEA deal with a British confidential informant in the ship-repair business, see Daly v. Hubner, 2001 Ch.D. 1, although note that the court merely assumed that Terence Daly was accurately testifying to his DEA arrangement.
241. Although in a single week in 1989 U.S. authorities seized fully 30 tons of cocaine, higher street prices of cocaine did not follow. Thoumi, Political Economy, 195. U.S. cocaine prices did temporarily spike after the major Tranquilandia seizure. They also rose 19 percent between February and September 2005, and wholesale prices climbed again in 2007–8. See Strong, Whitewash, 142; INCSR (2006), 104–5; and Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 315.
242. INCSR (1997), 9.
