Mystery man Baruch Vega helps to untangle more of the "Bogotá Connection"

Vega was very involved with several U.S. law enforcement operations in 1999 and 2000 that sought to snare narco-traffickers with Colombia’s infamous North Valley Cartel.

Vega claims that corrupt U.S. agents that are part of the Bogotá Connection seriously compromised his role as government asset and that a number of his informants within Colombia’s narco-trafficking underworld were assassinated as a result.
(The Bogotá Connection was revealed in a series of government documents uncovered by Narco News over the past year, including an internal U.S. Justice Department document known as the Kent memo, which advances detailed allegations of a criminal conspiracy involving corrupt U.S. law enforcers who are operating in league with key Colombian narco-traffickers.)

Vega recently contacted Narco News to provide his assessment of some recent developments that he believes could be key in busting the Bogotá Connection, if the U.S. government chooses to aggressively pursue these opportunities.

Currently, two key North Valley Cartel traffickers who have full knowledge of the Bogotá Connection are in custody — one recently extradited to the United States and one set to be extradited in the near future. Vega claims both of these individuals cooperated with him during his work for the DEA in Colombia and might well see it to their benefit to cooperate again — if the right offer is made.

One of those individuals is Gabriel Puerta Parra, who was extradited to the United States in May 2006 and is now in U.S. custody. Puerta Parra (known as the Doctor) is a former member of Colombia’s intelligence agency, the DAS, and had close ties to the North Valley Cartel and the right-wing paramilitary groups that served as muscle for the narco-trafficking organization.

The other narco-trafficker who might be key to exposing the Bogotá Connection is Luise Hernando Gomez Bustamante, who was recently deported from Cuba to Colombia and is now awaiting extradition to the United States.

In the late 1990s, Gomez Bustamante, a top leader of Colombia’s North Valley Cartel narco-trafficking syndicate, became one of the targets of a DEA investigation called Operation Cali-Man, which made use of Vega as an asset and was overseen by a DEA supervisor in Miami named David Tinsley.

In mid January 2000, Gomez Bustamante attended a meeting in Panama to discuss possible cooperation with the DEA. According to a DEA report surfaced by Narco News, during the course of that meeting, Gomez Bustamante revealed that a high-level DEA agent in Bogotá was on the “payroll” of a corrupt Colombian National Police colonel named Danilo Gonzalez — who was eventually indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on narco-trafficking charges.

“In January 2000, in Panama, we met with Rasguño [Gomez Bustamante’s nickname) and he was very helpful,” Vega says. “He was the first one (among the North Valley Cartel) to express his willingness to cooperate. To try and shut his mouth will be hard because he is an important individual.”

Vega also told Narco News that he met with Col. Gonzalez in Aruba in the spring of 2003. That meeting was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to Vega.

At the time, Gonzalez, who was a key player in the Bogotá Connection, was in the sights of the U.S. government for his corrupt activities and was willing to discuss cooperating with U.S. law enforcers. His meeting with Vega was an effort to test those waters.

Vega claims that during that meeting, Gonzalez laid out the entire backbone of the Bogotá Connection, naming names, including the allegedly corrupt U.S. law enforcers with DEA and U.S. Customs who were assisting the narco-traffickers with a variety of tasks — such as leaking information about U.S. law enforcement operations in Colombia.

Vega says all of the information from that meeting with Gonzalez was turned over to the FBI.

Gonzalez eventually became the target of a U.S. indictment charging him with narco-trafficking, money laundering and murder. He was assassinated in Colombia in the spring of 2004 while preparing to surrender to the U.S. government.

Vega also informed Narco News that another major narco-trafficker has been key to building the cases against his former cartel allies, such as Puerta Parra and Gomez Bustamante. That individual is Victor Patino Fomeque, himself a former North Valley Cartel ring leader as well as a former member of the Colombian National Police. Patino Fomeque, who was extradited to the United States in 2002, has been cooperating with the U.S. government, according to Vega.

“Victor [began cooperating with U.S. officials] and that led to the indictments of the North Valley Cartel leadership [in 2004],” Vega claims. “And he is still cooperating, and with Rasguño [now in custody] that could be very big.”

Vega adds that Patino Fomeque, too, was a key part of the Bogotá Connection. In fact, Vega says Patino Fomeque was part of a group of several North Valley Cartel members who provided some $400,000 in 2000 to help fund a political campaign to elect a corrupt U.S. law enforcer to a local political office on the East Coast.

Vega says former CNP Col. Gonzalez, who helped to arrange the meeting in Colombia where the campaign money was exchanged, confirmed the details of the deal to him, on tape, during their meeting in 2003 in Aruba. Vega also claims that both Patino Fomeque and his former accountant have provided this information to U.S. authorities as part of their cooperation.

When Danilo [Gonzalez] told me about [the campaign contribution], he said they did not know it was a corruption in the U.S. to help with a campaign,” Vega says. “He said after all [they] did for us, we felt it was the least we could do for them.”

Vega predicts that the wheels are starting to come off the cart on the cover-up of the Bogotá Connection. He says too many people who know all the details, including narco-traffickers now in custody and honest DEA agents who will soon retire, have an incentive to start talking — out of a sense of integrity in the case of the honest agents, or, in the case of the narco-traffickers, as part of their defense to avoid long prison sentences.

Once those strings begin to be pulled, the corrupt U.S. law enforcers will begin to talk as well, to assure they do not become the last rat left on a sinking ship.

[If] "Rasguño" is extradited to the U.S., this would be the best thing, not for the war on drugs, but to uncover the biggest political and police corruption ever between corrupt Colombian authorities and members of the U.S. embassy in Bogotá…,” Vega says. "[Department of Justice] Attorney Thomas Kent would get a medal.”

Time will tell if Vega is right.

Stay tuned....