The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A man described by the U.S. government as one of the world’s biggest drug lords - Manuel Felipe Salazar-Espinosa — was sentenced in Manhattan yesterday to 30 years in prison for directing an organization that shipped tons of cocaine into the United States.
Calling Salazar-Espinosa “a very big fish,” U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the defendant caused tons of cocaine to enter the United States and laundered tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds. He was ordered to forfeit $50 million.
Kaplan said Salazar-Espinosa, 58, could have faced life in prison, but U.S. prosecutors honored Colombia’s request not to seek the maximum sentence. Prosecutors requested a term of 40 to 60 years.
The judge said it was difficult to sympathize with Salazar-Espinosa, who was raised in an upper-middle-class family, attended college and then chose drug dealing as “an economic proposition, a way to make even more money, vast amounts of money.”
Kaplan said Salazar-Espinosa tried to structure his business affairs in a way that would let him deny that he was part of the drug trade. The judge issued a warning: Drug lords who hide behind those more directly involved are making an “egregious miscalculation.”
Prosecutors said the network smuggled more than $100 million in cocaine from Colombia into the United States — most of it in New York - and laundered $12 million to $14 million per week in narcotics proceeds.
Salazar-Espinosa was convicted last year of drug importation conspiracy, cocaine distribution and money laundering conspiracy charges.
Before he was sentenced, Salazar-Espinosa was defiant, asking “for what is fair,” but adding that had never committed a crime in the United States.
“I was incarcerated when those men committed their crimes,” he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anirudh Bansal said Salazar-Espinosa continued to commit crimes after his May 25, 2005, arrest, directing others to make drug shipments.
Although an indictment accused Salazar-Espinosa of importing Colombian cocaine into the United States through Mexico between 2002 and 2005, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said he actually had been working in the drug trade for at least 20 years.
He said Salazar-Espinosa’s career was ended with help from law enforcers in Colombia, Panama and Mexico.
He was arrested after he helped arrange to hide 1.3 tons of cocaine in the arm of a crane being shipped from Panama to Mexico.
Authorities said they found the drugs in about 1,300 bags in the warehoused crane outside Panama City two months after his arrest.
Copyright 2008 Newsday