FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today added the names of Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez and Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante, two leaders of the violent North Valle drug cartel in Colombia, 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. 

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 Colombian drug kingpins named to the SDNT list today by OFAC smuggle multi-ton quantities of cocaine into the United States.  In addition to the two North Valle cartel leaders, OFAC has added 13 businesses and 21 associated individuals in Colombia that it has determined are acting as fronts for Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez, Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante and another North Valle cartel leader, Arcangel de Jesus Henao Montoya, previously named an SDNT principal individual by OFAC in August 2000.  OFAC has cooperated over the past year with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Miami office in the designation of Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez.  

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 the Colombian drug cartels. With the addition of the names released today, the assets of a total of 613 businesses and individuals are blocked under the 1995 Executive Order; and those businesses and individuals are prohibited from American financial and business dealings. The list of SDNTs now includes 12 kingpins from Colombia’s drug cartels, namely Cali cartel leaders Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, Jose Santacruz Londoño, Helmer Herrera Buitrago, and Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia; North Coast cartel leader Julio Cesar Nasser David; and North Valle cartel leaders Ivan Urdinola Grajales, Julio Fabio Urdinola Grajales, Arcangel de Jesus Henao Montoya, Victor Julio Patiño Fomeque, Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante and Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez.

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