US DRUGGED POLICY
Colombia’s narco-candidate
BY AL GIORDANO
March 28- April 4, 2002
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In 1997 and ’98, alert US Customs agents in California seized
three Colombia-bound ships laden with 50,000 kilos of potassium
permanganate, a chemical necessary for the manufacture of cocaine.
According to an August 3, 2001, document signed by then–DEA
chief Donnie R. Marshall, the ships had originated in Hong Kong
and were each destined for Medellín, Colombia, to deliver
the chemical — whose legal uses include the manufacture of
printed circuit boards — to a company called GMP Productos
Quimicos, S.A. (GMP Chemical Products). Over the past decade,
GMP has imported huge quantities of potassium permanganate, according
to Marshall, and is suspected by Colombian law enforcement of
leaking the chemical to coke producers. The amount of permanganate
seized before reaching GMP was enough to make a half-million kilos
of cocaine, with a street value of $15 billion.
What makes this little episode of more than
passing interest is that GMP Chemical Products is owned by Pedro
Juan Moreno Villa, long-time right-hand man to Colombian presidential
candidate Alvaro Uribe Vélez, who is expected to win the
May 26 national election. Colombia’s Conservative Party threw
its support to Uribe after a poor showing in the recent congressional
elections. The party’s electoral disappointment stemmed from
public disaffection with current Conservative Party president
Andrés Pastrana’s support for the US military adventure
known as Plan Colombia — an American initiative, designed
to win the "War on Drugs" abroad, which has only further
entrenched drug production and organized crime. Ironically, Colombian
voters will likely elect Uribe, who, like his father, has been
deeply immersed in the drug economy from the earliest days of
his career — as evidenced, in part, by his long, intimate
political association with Moreno, who is currently managing Uribe’s
presidential campaign.
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