(Archived Content)
The Treasury Department on Monday added 41 businesses and eight individuals to its list of Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs), a list designated for economic sanctions against Colombian drug cartels.
Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has determined that these 49 new SDNTs are acting as fronts for the Cali and North Coast cartels. Among the notable drug cartel owned or controlled businesses on the list is the América soccer team, determined to be owned or controlled by Cali cartel leader Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela and other named SDNTs. Other named drug cartel owned or controlled businesses include several pharmaceutical and drug companies, a radio broadcasting company, as well as investment, construction and real estate firms.
Today's action sends a clear message that we will not allow corporate sleight-of-hand to enable the cartels to profit by using the U.S. financial system and by engaging in American business transactions, said James E. Johnson, Treasury Under Secretary for Enforcement. This list of companies shows the extent to which narcotics traffickers' illicit proceeds have infiltrated various commercial sectors as the traffickers attempt to legitimize their drug profits.
This action is part of the ongoing interagency effort of the Treasury, Justice and State Departments to carry out President Clinton's Executive Order 12978, signed on October 21, 1995, which applies economic sanctions against the Colombian drug cartels. With the addition of names released today, a total of 496 businesses and individuals whose assets are blocked under the 1995 Executive Order are also prohibited from American financial and business dealings.
The list of SDNTs includes the four Cali cartel drug kingpins named in the Executive Order, North Coast narcotics trafficker Julio Cesar Nasser David, and 491 other SDNTs that have been determined to be owned or controlled by, or to act for or on behalf of, persons designated in or pursuant to the Order.
Nine of the newly designated companies are successors or transformers, using new company names to firms previously designated as SDNTs because they were owned or controlled by the kingpins or agents of the cartels. A total of 27 transformer companies have been named as SDNTs to date. The U.S. Government will continue to identify businesses owned or controlled by drug cartels and expand the SDNT list to include additional Colombian drug trafficking organizations.
The list of businesses and individuals named by Treasury today as SDNTs is available at www.treas.gov/ofac. The list will be published in the Federal Register at a later date.