At 83 years old and victim of a heart condition, the former head of the Cali Cartel died in a US prison Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuelaaliases the “chess player”which thanks to drug money permeated political circles, companies and even football.
Rodríguez Orejuela, who led the Cali Cartel with his brother Miguel, had been in a North Carolina prison since late 2004 when he was extradited after he was captured in Colombia in 1995.
The “Chess Player” was born in the town of Mariquita, in the department of Tolima in January 1939. Years later his family moved to Cali (Valle del Cauca) where he began to work as a messenger for pharmacies until he became a powerful drug trafficker who even challenged his rivalPablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel.
After a long persecution, which cost the lives of judges, police officers and politicians, Rodríguez was arrested by an elite body of the State security forces.
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, in 1995. Photo AFP
His capture was achieved on June 9, 1995. He was hidden in a cove of a house in Cali, and was, at that time, one of the most wanted men in Colombia and in the world.
At the time, the Colombian authorities said that the mobster had a fleet of planes and helicoptersin which it transported cocaine shipments that arrived in the United States, all in association with other Mexican and Bolivian cartels.
In addition, he designed a network of corruption that allowed him launder millions of dollars product of the profits obtained from the sale of 80% of the cocaine that consumers in the United States bought.
Unlike the Medellín Cartel, which used to plant bombs, kill policemen, journalists, judges and media directors, among others, his actions were different because he bought everyone that did not allow him to do his illicit business.
His most notorious movement was that he achieved infiltrate Ernesto Samper’s presidential campaign to which he contributed 6,000 million pesos (about 1.5 million dollars today) and which gave rise to the so-called 8,000 process.
At the time of the Cali Cartel, the most diverse ways began to be used to get cocaine from Colombia to the United States: camouflaged in shipments fruit, coffee, vegetables, cement poles.
No frills
Although the Rodríguez Orejuela empire had given them the wealth and the facilities to live an ostentatious and ornate life, the capos of the Cali Cartel were always rather modest, with a fleet of Mazda cars, although they lived in real estate where money It was present with soccer fields, discos and stables.
“The chess player”, as Gilberto was known, also he was master of the art of the “caleta“, some small spaces that the godfathers of Cali built in their luxurious houses to avoid being captured in a possible police raid.
The capture of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela in 1995. Photo AFP
And although Pablo Escobar declared a war against the Colombian State with which, based on bombs and deaths, he requested the suspension of extradition to the United States, the godfathers of Cali decided to wage another type of war: based on bills buying politicians.
In this sense, they were involved in the well-known 8,000 process, referring to the financing they made of former President Samper’s campaign with drug money, elevating him to power with the promise that he would end his extradition.
Years after entering prison, they claimed that they also injected money into the campaign of Andrés Pastrana, who was the successor of Samper in the Presidency for the period 1998-2002.
Since that time, both Samper and Pastrana have denied these accusations and the alleged links with the Cali Cartel.
Gilbert always preferred bribes to violenceand that characterized him along with a more temperate and calculating personality that earned him the nickname “the chess player” and helped him to relate and have contacts in the Colombian high sphere.
passion for football
The Rodríguez Orejuela brothers became the majority shareholders of América de Cali at the end of the 1970s and since then the Diablos Rojos saw some of the best players pass through their ranks South Americans of the time.
Among them were the Argentine goalkeeper Julio César Falcioni, the Paraguayan striker Juan Manuel Battaglia, the Uruguayan goalkeeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz, the Peruvian creative César Cueto, or the Colombian forwards Willington Ortiz and Antony De Ávila The titles abounded and the success in international tournaments took them to the dispute of four finals of Copa Libertadores, which they lost in 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1996.
However, in 1996 the Office for the Control of Foreign Assets of the United States Department of the Treasury declared the companies under the control of the Rodríguez Orejuela as dangerous for the economy of that country and on June 8, 1999 the América de Cali became part of the “Clinton List”.
The club’s bank accounts were immediately canceled and there were no sponsors or signatures to support the management of the institution.
It was the end of the credit life of America, because nobody wanted to have links with drug traffickers. However, the club managed to get off that list in 2012 and no longer has any ties to drug traffickers that permeated all spheres of power in Colombia in the 1990s.
Source: EFE
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