FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last night added the names of 59 businesses and 78 individuals to its list of Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs). SDNTs are subject to the economic sanctions imposed against Colombian drug cartels in Executive Order 12978. OFAC has determined that these 137 new SDNTs are acting as fronts for Colombia’s Cali drug cartel and are part of its international business and financial network operating in Spain and Colombia. The drug cartel businesses added to the list of SDNTs today are all determined to be owned or controlled by Cali cartel leaders Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, currently incarcerated in a Colombian maximum security prison, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, and other named SDNTs.

The OFAC action blocks the assets of SDNTs found in U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits Americans from doing business with them, thereby further exposing, isolating, and incapacitating Colombian drug cartels and their agents. The 59 Cali drug cartel businesses announced today include 10 Colombian-owned Spanish companies and 49 Colombian companies. In Spain, the businesses include real estate firms, an Internet services company, a coffee import/export company, a general services company, a graphic arts services provider, and a film distribution services company.  In Colombia, the businesses include a money exchange house, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors, import/export firms, and investment, real estate and consulting companies.

The network of 59 Cali cartel fronts in Spain and Colombia named today on the list join 244 other Colombian drug cartel businesses on the SDNT list.  The list includes Cali cartel businesses Copservir, and its Drogas La Rebaja drugstore chain and Credirebaja charge card, the America de Cali professional soccer team, the Cosmepop cosmetics company, the Farmacoop pharmaceutical laboratory, a Cali radio broadcasting company, as well as consulting, investment, construction, real estate, agricultural, and distribution firms.

This action is part of the ongoing interagency effort of the Treasury, Justice and State Departments to carry out Executive Order 12978, signed on October 21, 1995, which applies economic sanctions against Colombia’s drug cartels.

 The assets of a total of 749 Colombian drug cartel businesses and individuals are now blocked under the 1995 Executive Order; and those businesses and individuals are prohibited from American financial and business dealings. The list of SDNTs includes 12 kingpins from Colombia’s Cali, North Valle, and North Coast drug cartels.

The list of businesses and individuals named by OFAC as SDNTs today is attached and available at www.treas.gov/ofac, as is the entire list of SDNTs.  Today’s list will be published in the Federal Register at a later date.