Iván Duque, the mafia’s puppet?

by Frank Cardona May 25, 2018

Colombia’s former President Álvaro Uribe, listed by the DIA in the 1990s as a kingpin, isn’t the only unsavory character supporting Iván Duque. The conservative presidential candidate can count on an army of questionable political figures.

Duque’s political support team is full of political clans that have become infamous because of their ties to death squads, organized crime or corruption.

The conservative has also received the unofficial support of multiple former Medellín Cartel associates and the wife of Juan Francisco Gómez, the former governor of La Guajira who is now in prison for ordering six homicides.

At: https://colombiareports.com/ivan-duque-the-mafias-puppet/

They are the scum of the earth and have kept Colombia terrorized for decades.

Former President Alvaro Uribe, his prominent supporter, has always been connected to the narcotrafficers, starting even before him, with his dad.

Uribe's personal allies include a close friend, Pablo Escobar, the most powerful thug of them all, as noted in a Department of Defense investigation in the 1990's.

Uribe has always been useful for the M.I.C. concerned with using Colombia as a "lily pad" nation, as Donald Rumsfeld called it, a "forward operating" base from which the US gov't, spread out among seven military bases, operates. That plan was put in motion to allow US military personnel to be able to move in any direction toward Central America, and any point in South America, should the claim be made the US was needed to put down "threats" to the region.

Colombia, U.S. sign deal on use of bases
October 30, 2009 4:50 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Colombia and the United States signed an agreement Friday that allows U.S. personnel to be stationed at seven military bases in the South American nation.

The United States says it needs the bases to help in its fight against terrorists and narcotraffickers, especially since the closure a few months ago of a U.S. base in Ecuador. The United States maintains similar "forward operating locations" in El Salvador and Aruba-Curacao.

Colombia's agreement to host the Americans has come under harsh criticism in Latin America, particularly from President Hugo Chavez in neighboring Venezuela.

Chavez has likened the agreement to an act of war and accuses the United States of wanting to stage military personnel nearby to destabilize his leftist government.

The U.S. forward operating location in Aruba-Curacao is off the northern coast of Venezuela.

More:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/10/30/us.colombia.bases/index.html

Great comments, sandensea. People could learn a lot from reading the profiles of this dirty right-winger's supporters. It would be unbelievable if these people were politically prominent in any other country. They lack respectability on every level.

One of the biggest names, you'll recall, during Miami's Cocaine Cowboy days in the 1980s, and a former business partner of Jeb "low energy" Bush.

From a Sun-Sentinel article written during the Cocaine Cowboy haydays:

Lawyers Fear Fraud Defendants Will Flee
February 15, 1986|United Press International

MIAMI — Colombian coffee baron Alberto Duque is now behind bars, facing a possible 288 years for one of the largest bank frauds in U.S. history, and prosecutors think his five co-defendants are shaking in their boots.

They think the others, all Colombian nationals, are scared enough to leave the country before their trial on similar charges begins next week. The prosecution unsuccessfully attempted to have their bond revoked and now nervously awaits Tuesday morning, when the case resumes.

``At the bare minimum they should have had their passports turned over to the custody of the court,`` prosecutor Mark Schnapp said. ``We would also have liked to know if Victor Duque`s businesses in Colombia are bankrupt and how he has paid for the apartments and hotels he has been staying in since the trial started.``

Alberto Duque, 36, was convicted Tuesday on 60 of 61 counts alleging that he engineered $85 million in loans from American banks by grossly inflating the value of coffee and fruit inventories and creating shipping lists for cargo that did not exist. Most of the money has disappeared.

More:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-02-15/news/8601100523_1_bank-fraud-fraud-charges-bond

From the Miami Herald:

From the Herald archives: Bush and business: Fast success, brushes with mystery
BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI AND ALFONSO CHARDY

aviglucci@MiamiHerald.com
October 06, 2002 04:27 PM

Updated June 10, 2015 06:15 PM

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the Miami Herald on Oct. 6, 2002.

SOUR RELATIONSHIPS Some people Bush dealt with were not what they seemed
Yet Bush’s path to success was also dogged by controversy:


. . .


* In 1983, Bush and Codina reached an agreement to lease a large amount of office space in their Museum Tower building to Alberto Duque, a purportedly wealthy coffee merchant from Colombia with a controlling interest in a Miami bank and a long list of friends among the city’s business elite.

Bush attended lavish dinners hosted by Duque and flew in Duque’s private jet airplane to the inauguration of Costa Rica’s president.

But Duque’s financial empire, it turned out, was a house of cards built on nonexistent coffee. Duque was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years, but skipped out of a halfway house and fled abroad after serving seven years.

Codina publicly shouldered the blame for setting up the Duque deal. Bush has said he was taken in, along with many other prominent citizens, by a master scam artist.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/jeb-bush/article23679718.html

~ ~ ~

Also from the Sun-Sentinel:

Jury Ponders Coffee Czar`s Alleged $85 Million Fraud
February 6, 1986|United Press International

MIAMI — Deceit, not negligence, caused Alberto Duque`s multimillion dollar Colombian coffee empire to crumble in the hands of the law, prosecutors said on Wednesday at the end of his five-month fraud trial.

. . .

Duque, 35, was charged with 61 counts of engineering bank loans by grossly inflating the value of coffee and fruit juice inventories, and creating shipping lists for cargo that did not exist. He faces a maximum of 300 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

. . .

Defense attorney James Jay Hogan in his closing statement on Tuesday said Duque, the son of a leading coffee exporter in Colombia, was rich long before his companies began applying for loans totaling $122 million from about 20 banks.
. . .

Duque`s coffee empire, which included the Chase & Sanborn Co., the General Coffee Co., and the Colombian Coffee Co., collapsed in 1983.

. . .

Duque filed for protection from creditors under U.S. bankruptcy laws in 1983 when the banks sued to get their money back. His businesses have since been in bankruptcy court and he has lost items including two private jets, a Rolls-Royce, a Maserati, a Mercedes-Benz, a yacht, two luxury condominiums and scores of original lithographs, sketches and oil paintings.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-02-06/news/8601080661_1_largest-bank-frauds-coffee-companies-million-fraud

Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
Updated 7:16 pm, Saturday, June 16, 2018

ZIPAQUIRA, Colombia (AP) — Gustavo Petro began his long ascent to the cusp of Colombia's presidency in this self-built barrio named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

In 1983, equipped with little more than a shovel and a surplus of revolutionary ideals, the then-clandestine militant led some 400 squatter families in a months-long battle with local authorities to secure a plot of land to build their ramshackle homes here in Zipaquira, a city north of Bogota. Their rallying cry was: "A roof and a dignified life."

Thirty five years later, the founders of the "Bolivar 83" barrio still living in the slum celebrate Petro's rise as their own. The leftist candidate will face off against conservative Ivan Duque on Sunday in Colombia's presidential runoff election.

. . .

"Those who seek to brand Gustavo a guerrilla and a killer don't realize he didn't carry a weapon in his hands," said Gonzalo Suarez, a fellow M-19 militant.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Ex-rebel-looks-to-defy-odds-in-Colombia-13000807.php

By Anthony Faiola
18 June 2018 — 5:47am

Bogota: Colombians have voted in a highly divisive election pitting a US-educated conservative against a former leftist guerrilla, with the result set to change the course of the drug war and potentially upend the peace accord that ended Latin America's longest insurgency.

. . .

"Colombia has never really had a democracy, but an oligarchy of the same upper-class families," said Fabrizio Guevara, a 26-year old graphic designer who voted in central Bogota on Sunday. "Petro offers a different way."

. . .

Duque, meanwhile, has pledged to redouble efforts to combat a record surge of coca - the building bloc of cocaine. Educated at Washington, DC.'s American and Georgetown universities, Duque spent years living in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and working for the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. American officials see him as a reliable partner who may bring back the controversial practice of forced coca eradication with aerial spraying, which has been banned since 2015 because of its health risks.

"You could call him a 'DC Colombian,' " said Juan Felipe Celia, a Colombia expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think-tank.

Washington Post

More:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-america/dc-colombian-squares-off-against-former-guerrilla-as-colombians-vote-20180618-p4zm2d.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44513368

"Conservative political newcomer Ivan Duque has been elected president of Colombia.
With nearly all votes counted. Mr Duque has 54% with his rival Gustavo Petro on 41.8%.

The result raises questions about the future of a historic but controversial peace deal with Farc rebels.
Mr Duque, who is supported by former President Alvaro Uribe, has said he will overhaul the 2016 agreement which gave the rebels places in Congress.

The orthodox economist also says he will revisit crimes allegedly committed by the rebels during the brutal five-decade conflict with the government."