ACCESSION NUMBER:00000
FILE ID:95120610.LAR
DATE:12/06/95
TITLE:06-12-95 GELBARD SAYS DRUG CARTELS NOW TRANSNATIONAL IN SCOPE
TEXT:
TR95120610 (Speech at Miami Conference) (590)
By Eric Green
USIA Staff Correspondent
MIAMI -- Today's criminal, drug, and terrorist organizations are
transnational in scope, operating with impunity and taking full
advantage of new technologies, says the State Department's top
official on international narcotics matters.
Robert Gelbard, assistant secretary of state for international
narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the 19th annual Miami
Conference on the Caribbean and Latin America Dec. 6 that nations must
develop the means to fight a vast array of "cunning and wealthy
criminals whose operations now extend throughout entire regions and
even globally."
Using the Colombian drug traffickers as an example, he said criminals
have an enormous capacity for corrupting national political and
economic systems, "thus eroding society from the inside." And over the
past few years, drug traffickers such as the Cali cartel have become
dangerously sophisticated.
A former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Gelbard said drug traffickers
rely less now on "raw intimidation," the method of operation favored
by Colombia's Medellin cartel, and more and more on insidious methods
of financial corruption and political subversion, as employed by the
Cali group.
If there were an "elite international crime business school awarding
MBAs in economic manipulation and subversion," Gelbard said, the Cali
cartel would have run it. "And they would have had alumni highly
placed throughout not only Colombian government and society, but in
prominent and influential positions around the world as well."
The Cali group, he said, uses such sophisticated intelligence methods
as tapping into telephone lines, intercepting military, police,
government, and private communications and then developing a
"cutting-edge computer system to manage this vast intelligence base."
Extradition to the United States is the one thing criminals of all
sorts fear more than anything else, Gelbard said. He added that that
is why, by bribing officials participating in Colombia's
constitutional reform process in 1991, the criminals eliminated the
possibility of extradition to the United States.
So serious is the threat of international crime, Gelbard said, that
President Clinton told the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in
New York in October that he was proposing a five-part plan to attack
the problem.
Among the new initiatives Clinton proposed was possible sanctions on
nations and financial institutions that allow illicit funds to be
laundered through their financial systems.
In addition, Gelbard said, Clinton's initiatives included an executive
order to freeze U.S. assets of front companies and individuals
associated with the Cali cartel and to prohibit U.S. firms from
conducting business with them.
The president also called on members of the United Nations to
negotiate a Universal Declaration on Citizens Security that would
"affirm the serious threat to world security that international crime
poses and demonstrate a global commitment to combat it."
Gelbard said the administration also believes that the business
community must do its part to stop the globalization of organized
crime and make clear they will not tolerate illegal and unethical
business practices.
The president, Gelbard said, has made it clear that the key to success
against criminal organizations is government-to-government
cooperation, as well as through government cooperation with the
private sector.
The battle against the world's international criminals will not be a
quick or easy one, Gelbard acknowledged. "A problem that has been long
in the making will not be solved overnight. But that does not mean we
cannot make serious inroads into it."
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