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News > Colombia

Colombian Ex-Footballer Viafara Arrested for Drug Trafficking

  • Former Colombian footballer Jhon Viafara is escorted by members of the Colombian Police Wednesday as he arrives at the Anti-narcotics Directorate at the Military Airport of Catam in Bogota.

    Former Colombian footballer Jhon Viafara is escorted by members of the Colombian Police Wednesday as he arrives at the Anti-narcotics Directorate at the Military Airport of Catam in Bogota. | Photo: EFE

Published 21 March 2019
Opinion

The U.S. Attorney General's office said that Viafara was part of a transnational network with links to the criminal gang, the Gulf Clan.

Colombian authorities detained former football star Jhon Viafara, accused of belonging to an organization that exported tons of cocaine in boats and semi-submersibles to the United States, which is requesting him in extradition, the Attorney General's Office said Wednesday.

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Viafara, 40, was arrested Tuesday along with four other people near the southern city of Cali after being involved in a car accident. Police said he was speeding while driving intoxicated.

Prosecutors in Texas believe Viafara was part of a criminal network tied to the nation's feared Gulf cartel, which for a decade moved large shipments of cocaine through the Pacific Ocean to Central America and into the U.S., Colombia's chief prosecutor's office said. The Court for the Eastern District of Texas for the federal crime of narcotics trafficking.

"According to the investigations conducted by U.S. authorities, the detainees would be part of a transnational network that would have links with the criminal structure of the Gulf Clan," a statement from the Attorney General's Office said.

The Gulf Clan is a criminal gang consisting mainly of extreme right-wing paramilitaries and dedicated to the production and trafficking of cocaine.

Against Viafara and the others captured "the injunction states that, between 2008 and 2018, they would have partnered to move shipments of cocaine through speedboats, semi-submersibles and other types of vessels that left the Colombian Pacific for Central America," the Prosecutor General's Office said.

Viafara, a midfielder, played for the Colombian national team, Once Caldas, Pasto, America, La Equidad, Junior, Pereira, Medellin, Cali and Aguilas Doradas, as well as Portsmouth and Southampton from England and the Real Sociedad de España.

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