Colombia arrests ‘Sinaloa Cartel money laundering chief’

Colombia’s police on Saturday detained a senior drug trafficker for allegedly laundering money for the Sinaloa Cartel.

According to local media, Nestor Tarazona was reportedly arrested near Pereira, the capital of the Risaralda province and one of the cities where the senior drug lord allegedly laundered money for the Mexican cartel.

Colombia’s authorities did not publicly confirm the arrest of the senior crime lord with ties to family members of former President Alvaro Uribe and Vice-President Marta Lucia Ramirez.

Whether Tarazona was jailed after his latest arrest is unclear.

Elusive career

According to newspaper El Tiempo, Tarazona has been linked to drug trafficking since the 1980’s but primarily known for the breeding and trading of horses.

The narco was first arrested on drug trafficking charges in 1989 in the United States and sentenced to prison after a second arrest in 1990.

Tarazona was released and repatriated to Colombia in 1995, after which the narco resumed his criminal activities from the central Colombian Meta province, according to the US Treasury Department.

At one point, Tarazona moved to Mexico, according to US authorities and transnational crime website InSight Crime.

Despite being convicted of drug trafficking and accused of money laundering in 2009, the narco apparently had no difficulty traveling between Colombia, Mexico and the United States where he was arrested again in 2012.

Curiously, the Treasury Department’s removed the narco from its so-called Kingpin List and Colombia’s prosecution opened an investigation against Tarazona the same year.

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