ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997           TAG: 9702260114
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: A-1  EDITION: METRO 

OPERATION EL CID

Key distribution centers

Houston, Miami,

New York and

Los Angeles.

Money laudering

Cash is collected from street sales and laundered in sums between $100,000 and

$2 million and sent back to Colombia banks.

ROANOKE

Operation El Cid begins in Roanoke in 1991 after Javier Cruz is charged with transporting cocaine.

Cocaine into the United States

Various routes and methods

of delivery included airplane,

cargo vessel, submarine and

overland trucking.

COLOMBIA

Home of the Cali cartel and its bosses, laboratory and banks where laundered money was received.

PERU

Coca plantation

OPERATION EL CID

A major international

drug investigation that

began in 1991 with the arrest of

Javier Cruz, who was transporting

cocaine for Colombia's Cali cartel

out of his Roanoke car dealership,

Like New Inc.

There have been 136 arrests nation-

wide, mostly in New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Cleveland that the DEA says stemmed from information gathered by the investigation.

The DEA says it laundered $47 million in drug money. Of that,

$42 million was returned to drug distributors; the DEA kept the rest as its ``fee'' for laundering the money and used it to finance

the investigation.

1.5 tons of cocaine was seized, the agency says. A total of

$50 million worth of drugs and assets was seized.

A federal judge in Roanoke unsealed indictments against 41 people Tuesday. At least half live in Colombia, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. Three are in custody. Prosecutors expect a dozen to be in court here in the next few weeks.

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