(Bogotá) Colombian police and the United States Attorney General’s Office announced Friday the capture in both countries of 21 people associated with a drug trafficking organization, 10 of whom were arrested in the South American country and are “extraditable.”
“We have captured 21 members of an organization dedicated to money laundering and drug trafficking in the United States and Colombia,” Colombian police chief General William Salamanca said on his X account.
The arrests took place between Thursday and Friday, a police spokesperson told AFP.
According to General Salamanca, the arrests of 12 people in Colombia, “10 of whom are extraditable”, were carried out in the departments of Valle del Cauca (southwest), Amazonas (southeast), Meta (center) and Antioquia (northwest).
Nine other people were arrested in the United States in Seattle (northwest), Boston and New Jersey (northeast).
The operation, dubbed “Red Rose,” was coordinated by the U.S. drug enforcement agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Colombian police, as well as prosecutors from both countries.
The money, approximately $2.5 million per month, was deposited into Colombia’s banking system through transfers from “hotel companies and commercial establishments,” according to a Colombian police statement released Friday.
The same group is responsible, according to authorities, for the monthly shipment of 500 kilos of cocaine from the port of Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast of Colombia (southwest), “to Puerto Rico and the countries of Central America », the destination being the United States.
The operation resulted in the seizure of $1 million, 34 kilos of cocaine, two kilos of heroin, 75,000 fentanyl pills, 15 kilos of synthetic drugs and eight firearms.