By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
Colombian drug lord Francisco Gonzalez Uribe, designated by the Justice Department as one of “the world’s most significant drug kingpins”, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York to 30 years in prison, authorities announced.
Gonzalez Uribe, 44, was arrested in 2009 in the Dominican Republic and pleaded guilty to drug charges in June.
“In the international drug trafficking underworld, Gonzalez Uribe was almost peerless,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “Today’s sentence should send a strong message to narcotics dealers around the world that if you try to smuggle drugs into our country, we will find you and prosecute you with the full force of our laws.”
Authorities charged that from at least 2007 through 2009, he headed an organization that shipped thousands of kilograms of cocaine and heroin to countries like Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
The drug then went to the U.S. and Europe.
During the probe, the DEA seized larges quantities of drugs. Recorded phone calls also showed he had been trying to obtain a number of large planes, including a
DC-8 jumbo jet, to ship large quantities of drugs, authorities said.
