Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who has just been reelected president of Colombia with more than 70 percent of the vote, is preparing to take his oath on August 7. After my offer to the nation’s attorney general to testify in the open case against Santofimio, which should have lasted for another two months, the judge has abruptly closed it. In protest, Colombia’s ex-president and ambassador to Washington has resigned, Uribe has had to cancel the naming of another ex-president as the new ambassador to France, and a new minister of foreign affairs has been named to replace the former, who went to occupy the embassy in Washington.
The United States government knows perfectly well that if they deny me their protection, I could well be killed in the coming days, because I am the only witness in the case against Santofimio. They also know that with me, the keys to some of the most horrendous crimes in Colombia’s recent history would also die, along with valuable information about the penetration of narco-trafficking into all the most powerful and untouchable levels of presidential, political, judicial, military, and media power.
Officials of the American Embassy are posted at the plane’s stairs; they’re there to carry up the suitcases and boxes I managed to pack in a few hours with help from a couple of friends. They look at me curiously, as though wondering why an exhausted-looking, middle-aged woman awakens so much interest in the media, and now also from their government. A DEA special agent six and a half feet tall, who identifies himself as David C. and sports a Hawaiian shirt, informs me that he has been tasked with escorting me to American territory. He also tells me that the bi-engine plane will take six hours to reach Guantánamo, and after an hour-long stop to fill up on fuel, two more to reach Miami.
I don’t feel at ease until I see, safe in the back of the plane, two boxes containing evidence of the crimes committed in Colombia by the convicted felons Thomas and Dee Mower, owners of Neways International of Springville, Utah, a multinational company that I am facing in a lawsuit from 1998 worth thirty million dollars. Although in only eight days a U.S. judge has found the Mowers guilty of some of the crimes I’ve spent eight years trying to prove before Colombian courts, all my offers to cooperate with Eileen O’Connor’s office in the Justice Department in Washington—plus five IRS attachés in the American Embassy in Bogotá—have blown up. Reacting furiously when they learned about my calls to the DOJ, the IRS, and the FBI, the embassy’s press office has sworn to block any attempt at communication with the government agencies of the United States.
The reason for their resistance has nothing to do with the Mowers and everything to do with Pablo Escobar: in the embassy’s Human Rights office works a former collaborator of Francisco Santos, the vice president of the republic, whose family owns the publishing house Casa Editorial El Tiempo. The media conglomerate occupies 25 percent of Álvaro Uribe’s ministerial cabinet, which allows the company access to a gigantic cut of the state publicity budget—the largest Colombian advertiser—on the eve of El Tiempo’s sale to one of the main editorial groups in the Spanish-speaking world. Another member of the family, Juan Manuel Santos, has just been named minister of defense and tasked with renovating the Colombian Air Force fleet. So much State generosity for a single media family serves a purpose far beyond securing the country’s main newspaper’s unconditional support of Uribe’s government. It guarantees the newspaper’s absolute silence on the imperfect past of the president of the republic. It’s a past that the United States government already knows about. I do too, and very well.
ALMOST NINE HOURS AFTER TAKEOFF, we reach Miami. I am starting to worry about the abdominal pain that has been with me for almost a month. It seems to get worse with every hour that passes. I haven’t seen a doctor in six years, because Thomas Mower has stripped me of my modest estate and the perpetual hereditary income generated by their South American operation, which I led.
The chain hotel is impersonal and large, as is my room. Minutes later, half a dozen officers of the DEA make their entrance. They look at me with inquisitive eyes while they examine the contents of my seven Gucci and Vuitton suitcases, loaded down with dresses by Valentino, Chanel, Armani, and Saint Laurent, and the small collection of artworks that have been in my possession for almost thirty years. They inform me that, in the coming days, I will meet with several of their superiors and Richard Gregorie, prosecutor in the case against General Manuel Antonio Noriega, so I can talk to them about Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, the top bosses of the Cali Cartel. The criminal case against Pablo Escobar’s archenemies will begin in a matter of weeks in a Florida court, led by the same prosecutor who won the Panamanian dictator’s conviction. If they are found guilty, the U.S. government will be able to not only ask for life in prison or its equivalent, but also reclaim the fortune of the two drug kingpins. In my most polite tone of voice I ask the officials for an aspirin and a toothbrush, but they reply that I’ll have to buy them. When I explain that all my worldly capital consists of two quarters, they find me a tiny toothbrush, the kind given away on planes.
“Looks like it’s been a while since you’ve stayed in an American hotel. . . .”
“It’s true. In my suites at the Pierre in New York and the Hotel Bel-Air bungalows in Beverly Hills, there were always aspirin and toothbrushes. And dozens of roses and champagne!” I tell them, sighing with nostalgia. “Now, thanks to a couple of convicts in Utah, I am so poor a simple aspirin is a luxury item.”
“Well, in this country, the hotels don’t have painkillers anymore: since it is a drug, it must be prescribed by a doctor, and as you surely know, that costs a fortune here. If you have a headache, try to ride out the pain and sleep. You’ll see, it’ll be gone tomorrow. Don’t forget, we just saved your life. For security reasons, you can’t leave the room or communicate with anyone, especially the press; and that includes the journalists from the Miami Herald. The United States government still can’t promise you anything, and starting now, everything will depend on you.”
I express my gratitude and tell them they don’t have a thing to worry about, since I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. I remind them that I was the one who offered to testify in various cases of exceptional importance, both in Colombia and in the United States.
David—the DEA agent—and the others withdraw to go over the next day’s agenda.
“You’ve just arrived, and already you’re asking the American government for things?” reproaches Nguyen, the police chief who stayed in the room.
“Yes, because I have terrible abdominal pain. And because I know that I can be of double use to your government: those two boxes contain evidence of the Colombian-Mexican part of a fraud against the Internal Revenue Service that I estimate in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In Russia, the class-action suit brought by Russian victims of Neways International was withdrawn after all the witnesses died and twenty-three million dollars were paid out. Imagine the size of the fraud in three dozen countries, against their distributors and against the IRS!”
“Overseas evasion isn’t our territory. We are antidrug officers.”
“If I had information on the location of ten kilos of coke, you all would find me an aspirin, right?”
“You don’t seem to understand that we aren’t the IRS or the FBI of the state of Utah, but the Florida DEA. And don’t confuse the Drug Enforcement Administration with a drugstore, Virginia!”
“What I understand, Nguyen, is that USA v. Rodríguez Orejuela is two hundred times bigger than the current USA v. Mower!”
The DEA officers return and inform me that all the TV channels are talking about my flight from Colombia. I reply that in the past four days I have declined almost two hundred interviews from all over the world and that, really, I’m not interested in whatever they’re saying. I beg them to turn off the TV, because I haven’t slept in eleven days or eaten in two; I am exhausted, and I just want to try to rest a few hours so I can offer all possible cooperation tomorrow.
When I’m finally alone with all my luggage and that sharp pain as my only company, I mentally prepare myself