Alleged Kingpin Planned Move South, Chile Says

SANTIAGO, Chile — During the final, desperate months of his life, accused Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes moved to Chile with his family, lieutenants and bodyguards to run a cocaine empire from the unlikely refuge of South America’s most prosperous nation, Chilean police said Monday.

Announcing the arrests of five accused accomplices who are suspected of helping Carrillo make investments and apply for permanent residence--including a prominent Chilean lawyer who is the brother of a senator--police provided the first substantial account of a mysterious chapter in the saga of Carrillo’s downfall.

The alleged drug lord died July 4 in Mexico City after extensive plastic surgery. He had intended to change his appearance and return to Chile, police said Monday.

His Chilean sojourn resulted from a carefully researched plan that advisors presented to the billionaire fugitive, the top dog among alleged Latin American drug lords at the time of his death. The advisors had also scouted Brazil and Argentina as potential bases of operation, police said.

Carrillo decided Chile was an ideal place to launder money, elude his dogged Mexican and U.S. pursuers and explore new trafficking routes, according to Mario Mallea Llanos, chief of Chile’s anti-drug police.

“This organization was professional to the maximum,” Mallea said. “We found documentation that they had operatives who researched and examined the whole gamut of the economy and investment opportunities. Chile seemed a good nation to them because of a solid, growing free-market economy.”

Sketchy reports from Mexico last week about Carrillo’s presence in Chile hit like a bomb in this nation that prides itself on being tranquil, orderly and entrepreneurial. Unlike the Andean coca-producing nations or increasingly active trafficking corridors such as Mexico and Brazil, Chile has largely avoided the drug problem.

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But Chile’s high-powered economy and banking system make it a potentially attractive money-laundering center, the U.S. State Department pointed out in a report this year. The report also cited increasing low-level corruption in the police and judiciary, who are among the most efficient and untainted on the continent.

Admitting his surprise, Mallea said the globalized economy of the drug underworld makes no nation safe. “We can never say we will never have big traffickers here, because they are everywhere,” he said.

The recent arrests in Chile indicated that Carrillo’s wealth opened doors with the Santiago elite. Accused of assisting the fugitive with investing drug money is lawyer Hernan Errazuriz Talavera, a former ambassador to Britain whose brother is a senator and former presidential candidate. The other suspects are a real estate broker, a driver, a manager of a money-wiring business and the Mexican wife of the cartel’s alleged operations boss in Chile.

The members of Carrillo’s advance team set up shop here in mid-1996 as their boss, under increasing pressure from his pursuers, traveled around the world, Mallea said. There have been reports that he visited Israel, Russia and Turkey.

A Carrillo entourage that police said entered Chile from Argentina under assumed names included his wife, five children, his doctor, half a dozen bodyguards, and top advisors.

In Chile from March 3 to June 6, Carrillo acquired a ranch, half a dozen mansions and 10 luxury cars, set up front companies and made at least $6 million in real estate investments, police said.

There are still questions about Carrillo’s movements and the investigation that teamed Chilean and Mexican police with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Last week, cryptic statements by Chilean officials gave the impression that they had detected Carrillo’s presence in the country and conducted surveillance on him.

But Mallea said Monday that his investigators merely suspected that Carrillo “was in Chile or planned to come to Chile.” They did not confirm that he had been in Chile until Mexican police furnished them with evidence this month, he said.