DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997          TAG: 9702260497

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: ROANOKE                           LENGTH:   51 lines

6-YEAR COCAINE INVESTIGATION BY DEA LEADS TO 41 INDICTMENTS

A six-year undercover money-laundering operation has yielded indictments against members of the world's largest cocaine syndicate and revealed how semi-submersible boats ferried tons of cocaine into the United States.

Two of the 41 indictments unsealed Tuesday named as defendants Louis Gomez Bustamante and Javier Baena Valez, both of whom the Drug Enforcement Administration identified as major figures in Colombia's Cali cartel.

Information from the secret investigation, code-named Operation El Cid, also helped convict 136 other traffickers nationwide since 1992, U.S. Attorney Bob Crouch said.

The DEA's undercover operation laundered $46 million from cocaine sales and converted the dollars into Colombian pesos for the Cali cartel, which supplies much of the cocaine smuggled into the United States, Crouch said.

In return, the DEA obtained remarkable details about the cartel's operations, including its use of a fleet of 20 sophisticated boats that evade radar by riding mostly submerged, said Peter Gruden, a regional DEA director.

Each of the specialized vessels could carry two people and up to a ton of cocaine, he said.

``This was the first confirmation of the existence of this fleet,'' Gruden said. Some of the boats have been seized or scuttled since the discovery.

The DEA also seized $49 million worth of drugs, cash and other assets linked to smuggling operations uncovered by the operation, Gruden said.

Operation El Cid began in 1991 after the arrests of two Colombians in Roanoke, which turned out to be a major transportation hub for cocaine smuggling.

``This is a sobering fact for it demonstrates that no community is immune from international drug trafficking,'' Crouch said.

According to the indictment, Roanoke automobile dealer Javier Cruz used his used car lot as a front for a transportation service that distributed more than 4 tons of cocaine, most of which ended up in New York.

Cruz and Leonardo Rivera, who operated a cocaine distribution ``cell'' in New York, faced possible life sentences and agreed to become DEA informants after they were arrested, Gruden said.

Guided by the DEA, Rivera offered to help the cartel by laundering money, and Cruz established an import-export business in Colombia to help convert the drug profits.

Cruz and Rivera are under federal supervision at an undisclosed location and they are expected to testify for the government, Crouch said. Three others indicted Tuesday also are in custody.

Prosecutors said they expect to arrest only about 12 of the 41 people who were indicted. Most of the others, including Bustamante and Valez, live in Colombia, which has no extradition agreement with the United States. KEYWORDS: COCAINE DRUG ARREST INDICTMENT VIRGINIA DEA

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