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| Colombia Drug Officer Removed as U.S. Aid Vanishes |
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Posted by CN Staff on May 10, 2002 at 18:18:37 PT By Jason Webb Source: Reuters 
The head of Colombia's anti-narcotics police was relieved of his duties and transferred to another posting on Friday after a scandal in which about $2 million in U.S. aid money vanished, apparently ending up in officers' pockets. The disappearance of the funds has led the United States to suspend a small portion of its anti-drug aid to the world's largest cocaine-producing country.The officer, Gen. Gustavo Socha, will be replaced by another top police chief to ensure the impartiality of investigations into the scandal, according to National Police chief Gen. Ernesto Gilibert. Meanwhile, Socha will take charge of providing security for public figures, Gilibert told reporters. Washington has already sunk $1 billion into the Plan Colombia anti-drug offensive, but has yet to see any impact on cocaine output or prices in U.S. cities. The missing money was not directly linked to Plan Colombia. Socha said on Thursday he had fired six officers after discovering that money had disappeared. He suggested the funds might have been accidentally diverted to legitimate -- but not anti-drug -- state spending. About $2 million were discovered missing about two months ago, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher in Washington. A U.S. embassy official told Reuters the money, taken from an account to help offset police administrative expenses, seemed to have lined officers' pockets. FULL U.S. AID SHOULD RESUME The United States has only frozen the aid that would normally enter this account. Boucher said the United States expects to renew aid fully once the matter is resolved. "This funding is a very, very small part of our overall assistance to Colombia and has not directly affected our counter-narcotics programs, including the aerial eradication program," he said. The scandal comes as the U.S. Congress considers expanding U.S. aid beyond the drug war to help Bogota fight Latin America's oldest and largest leftist rebel force, the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The line between Colombia's drug war and guerrilla conflict has blurred in recent years, and the United States indicted three FARC leaders on cocaine-trafficking charges in March. Rebels here are increasingly hitting urban targets with car bombs. Boucher said the United States has decided to move the Bogota office of the U.S. Agency for International Development to a secure location within the embassy compound. This follows an incident late last month when Colombian police found about 90 pounds of explosives within an abandoned car near the offices of El Tiempo, which also houses USAID and the German embassy. At first, police feared a car bomb, but they later said that the explosives had not been accompanied by any detonating device. Additional reporting by Jonathan Wright Source: Reuters Related Articles & Web Site: Colombia Drug War News Colombia Anti-Drug Police Chief Dumped Portion of U.S. Aid to Colombia Disappears US Halts Anti-Drug Aid To Colombia Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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