PANAMA CITY — Call them "the not ready for prime time traffickers."
That's how Panamanian and U.S. authorities are describing alleged functionaries of a Mexican drug cartel that lost a $270-million load of cocaine in a colossal bust off Panama's Pacific coast last month.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday April 06, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 41 words Type of Material: Correction
Cocaine bust: A caption in Monday's Section A with an article about a large drug seizure off the coast of Panama referred to the Coast Guardsman in the photo as an officer. He was a Coast Guard petty officer second class.
In interviews here, officials were practically shaking their heads over the carelessness and inattention to detail by the Sinaloa-based cartel during the two months that a pair of alleged lieutenants spent in Panama City arranging the Colombia-to-Mexico shipment.
The big break in the case, officials said, came shortly after the two men arrived in town, when Panamanian police got a tip from a "walk-in" source in this city's huge shipping industry. His suspicions were apparently aroused by the fact that the men's company was leasing metal cargo containers in the free-trade zone of Colon -- but had no apparent plans to fill them with cargo.
But the classic moment came several weeks later, when U.S. Coast Guard officers and sailors boarded the ship the men had bought, a 300-foot Panamanian-flagged cargo vessel called the Gatun.
Finding drugs on board was no sure thing, because traffickers find ingenious ways to hide their cargo behind false floors and walls, or submerge it in fuel tanks, or weld it inside heavy machinery, or embed it in cans of tuna or jars of marmalade.
But this time it was easy. U.S. Coast Guard and Panamanian officials noticed that customs seals on two of the 12 metal cargo containers on the Gatun had been improperly broken. When they opened the doors, bales of cocaine came tumbling out. Officials estimated the haul at 20 tons.
The biggest bonus for law enforcement officials may have been the laptop computer that one of the suspects, Jesus Mondragon, allegedly had in his possession when he was arrested at the airport in Panama City. Authorities say it contained a treasure trove of information that could lead to more arrests.
"I think he showed an excess of confidence," a top anti-drug prosecutor, Jose Abel Almengor, said in an interview.
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Power shift
The bust, and an emerging portrait of the cartel allegedly headed by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada as a gang that at least in this case couldn't shoot straight, offers a snapshot of the changing roles in the region's drug trafficking. It appears that the assumption of power by Mexican cartels from Colombian traffickers -- who once exclusively managed the transit of big cocaine loads to Mexico or the U.S. -- is hitting some snags.
Whether Zambada's men botched the deal or not, the seizure has raised fears that a bloodbath could ensue in Panama if, as expected, Mexican gangsters revisit the scene to exact revenge and settle scores. That's been traffickers' practice in the past when cocaine loads were lost along the U.S.-Mexico border or in the Caribbean.
"It's obvious that something went wrong for the narcos," Almengor said. "In any business, when something goes wrong there are consequences."
Said one foreign counter-narcotics official: "This could stir things up quite a bit."
It all began this year, when the two alleged traffickers, Mondragon and Jose Nunez, both Mexican nationals, arrived in Panama. Officials say they came to set up a front company called Marine Management & Chartering whose real purpose was to buy the Gatun for $3 million and use it to move drugs.
The plan called for the ship to pick up cargo containers in Colon, on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal, then transit the 50-mile waterway and sail south to pick up the multi-ton load of cocaine off the Pacific coast of Colombia.
The ship would then head north to deliver the drugs to the cartel at the Mexican port of Topolobampo in Sinaloa state, according to law enforcement sources here.
Containerized cocaine is no novelty. As much as four-fifths of all Colombian cocaine is shipped to the United States via Central America and Mexico aboard fishing vessels, so-called go-fast boats, or hidden on cargo ships like the Gatun. A decade ago, most traffic was airborne, before tighter aerial surveillance forced traffickers to change tactics.
But the tip about the men's apparent disinterest in actually putting any cargo in the containers kicked off an investigation that involved Panamanian authorities and members of a multinational counter-narcotics task force called Operation Panama Express, which includes the United States. The team investigated the company and began monitoring the two men's activities. Mondragon was found to have a U.S. criminal record for drug trafficking and robbery and to have used various aliases, officials said.
Colombians involved in narco-logistics are usually careful to use intermediaries who run seemingly legitimate businesses and who have no rap sheets, officials said. Colombians also send a second layer of "supervisors" to make sure their on-the-ground logisticians aren't cooperating with law enforcement, miscounting the drugs or otherwise making errors.
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Red flag
