Avensa was a Venezuelan airline headquartered in Caracas. It was in the process of financial restructuring, after it went into bankruptcy due to poor management in 2002, with Santa Barbara Airlines taking over its routes, although a single Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia continued to carry the Avensa name in service until it was grounded for good in 2004. Avensa operated from its hub at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetía.
Clandestine chemistry is chemistry carried out in secret, and particularly in illegal drug laboratories. Larger labs are usually run by gangs or organized crime intending to produce for distribution on the black market. Smaller labs can be run by individual chemists working clandestinely in order to synthesize smaller amounts of controlled substances or simply out of a hobbyist interest in chemistry, often because of the difficulty in ascertaining the purity of other, illegally synthesized drugs obtained on the black market. The term clandestine lab is generally used in any situation involving the production of illicit compounds, regardless of whether the facilities being used qualify as a true laboratory.
Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. He was murdered on February 19, 1986 by contract killers hired by the cartel.
United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 9–0, that the sniff of one's personal property in a public place by a specially trained police dog was not a "search" under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In the case, suspected drug trafficker Raymond Place had his luggage seized at LaGuardia Airport by agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration, which they exposed to a drug-sniffing dog and held onto for several days without a search warrant. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the unanimous Court that the sniff of a dog is sui generis, or "uniquely pervasive", and thus police do not need probable cause for their dogs to sniff a person's belongings in a public place. The Court did rule, however, that detaining a person's belongings while waiting for a police dog to arrive did constitute a "seizure" under the Fourth Amendment.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking. Books and investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor and diplomat Peter Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General.
Juan Ramón Matta-Ballesteros is a Honduran former major narcotics trafficker who has been credited with being one of the first to connect Mexican drug traffickers with the Colombian cocaine cartels. This connection paved the way for a major increase in the amount of cocaine smuggled into the United States during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Matta was indicted for operating several major cocaine smuggling rings in United States in the early 1980s. He was also one of the narcotics traffickers accused of the kidnap and murder of American DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.
A number of writers have alleged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the Nicaraguan Contras' cocaine trafficking operations during the 1980s Nicaraguan civil war. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General which ultimately concluded the allegations were unsupported. The subject remains controversial.
Operation Panama Express is a long-running Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), comprising participants from the Coast Guard Investigative Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida.
The Guadalajara Cartel also known as The Federation was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in the late 1970s by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in order to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States. Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered from the cocaine trade. Throughout the 1980s, the cartel controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border. It had operations in various regions in Mexico which included the states of Jalisco, Baja California, Colima, Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa among others. Multiple modern present day drug cartels such as the Tijuana, Juárez and Sinaloa cartels originally started out as branches or "plazas" of the Guadalajara Cartel before its eventual disintegration.
Operation Snowcap (1987–1995), launched in the spring of 1987, was a counter-narcotics operation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), BORTAC and military/police forces in nine Latin American countries. Operation Snowcap followed Operation Blast Furnace, a four month operation that started in July 1986, which deployed 160 Army personell and six Blackhawk helicopters to assist Bolivia in operations against cocaine laboratories in the Beni and Santa Cruz regions of Bolivia. At an annual cost to the DEA of $80 million, and involving approximately 140 agents at its onset, Snowcap was the largest counter-narcotics operation that had been launched in Latin America. The U.S. Department of Defense leased 6 UH-1 Huey helicopters, and provided flight training to Bolivian air force pilots and Special Forces training for UMOPAR and DEA agents. Operation Snowcap recruited U.S. Army infantry officers attending the Army Infantry Officer's advanced course in the late 1980s. Senior lieutenants and captains attending the course were given classified briefings attempting to recruit them from the Army to participate for operations in Bolivia and Peru.
Western Airlines Flight 2605, nicknamed the "Night Owl", was an international scheduled passenger flight from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico City, Mexico. On October 31, 1979, at 5:42 a.m. CST (UTC−06:00), the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight crashed at Mexico City International Airport in fog after landing on a runway that was closed for maintenance. Of the 89 people on board, 72 were killed, in addition to a maintenance worker who died when the plane struck his vehicle.
The Sinaloa Cartel, also known as the CDS, the Guzmán-Loera Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation and the Blood Alliance, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. It was established in Mexico during the late 1980s as one of a various number of subordinate “plazas" operating under a predecessor organization known as the Guadalajara Cartel. It is currently headed by Ismael Zambada García and is based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in many world regions but primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua. It also has a notable presence in a number of other regions in Latin America, such as Colombia; as well as in cities across the U.S. The United States Intelligence Community generally considers the Sinaloa Cartel to be the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world, making it perhaps even more influential and powerful than the infamous Medellín Cartel of Colombia was during its prime. It is frequently referred to by the media as one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world and indisputably the largest and most powerful in Mexico. During the leadership of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel was a multi-billion dollar international drug trafficking empire, controlling at least 90% of the world's heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana trade, exporting multi-ton shipments of narcotics to the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia per day. He also had a vast supply of submarines, boats, ships, trains, helicopters, and cargo planes. The Sinaloa Cartel quickly became the largest and most powerful drug cartel in Mexico, and even soon became the largest and most powerful drug cartel in the world. the Drug Enforcement Administration considers them to be "the biggest, most powerful drug cartel of all time".
La Familia Michoacana, La Familia, or LFM is a Mexican drug cartel and organized crime syndicate based in the Mexican state of Michoacán. They are known to produce large amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Michoacan. Formerly allied to the Gulf Cartel—as part of Los Zetas—it split off in 2006. The cartel was founded by Carlos Rosales Mendoza, a close associate of Osiel Cárdenas. The second leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco, preached his organization's divine right to eliminate enemies. He carried a "bible" of his own sayings and insisted that his army of traffickers and hitmen avoid using the narcotics they produce and sell. Nazario Moreno's partners were José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, Servando Gómez Martínez and Enrique Plancarte Solís, each of whom has a bounty of $2 million for his capture, and were contesting the control of the organization.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) is a federal law enforcement agency in Nigeria under the Federal Ministry of Justice charged with eliminating the growing, processing, manufacturing, selling, exporting, and trafficking of hard drugs. The agency was established by Decree Number 48 of 1989. The NDLEA is present in international airports, seaports, and border crossings. The NDLEA also targets the leaders of narcotics and money laundering organizations.
Illegal drug trade in Venezuela is the practice of illegal drug trading in Venezuela. Venezuela has been a path to the United States for illegal drugs originating in Colombia, through Central America and Mexico and Caribbean countries such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
Servicios Aéreos Rutas Oriente, S.A. de C.V. was an airline based in Monterrey, Mexico. The airline was established in 1991 and had its first flight on March 18 of that year. Due to their low prices, SARO was one of the first low-cost airlines in Mexico and America. It operated scheduled and charter flights throughout the Mexican Republic. SARO ceased all operations in 1995.
Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar was an American intelligence officer for the United States (DEA). In February 1985 Camarena was kidnapped by drug traffickers hired by Mexican politicians in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was interrogated under torture and murdered. Three leaders of the Guadalajara drug cartel were eventually convicted in Mexico for Camarena's murder. The U.S. investigation into Camarena's murder led to ten more trials in Los Angeles for other Mexican nationals involved in the crime. The case continues to trouble U.S.–Mexican relations, most recently when one of the three convicted traffickers, Rafael Caro Quintero, was released from a Mexican prison in 2013. Caro Quintero was again captured by Mexican Forces in July 2022.
The Cartel of the Suns is a Venezuelan organization supposedly headed by high-ranking members of the Armed Forces of Venezuela who are involved in international drug trade. According to Héctor Landaeta, journalist and author of Chavismo, Narco-trafficking and the Military, the phenomenon began when Colombian drugs began to enter into Venezuela from corrupt border units and the "rot moved its way up the ranks."
The Narcosobrinos affair is the situation of events that surrounded two nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores who were arrested for narcotics trafficking. The nephews, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, were arrested on 10 November 2015 by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after attempting to transport 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States. A year later on 18 November 2016, the two nephews were found guilty, with the cash allegedly destined to "help their family stay in power". On 14 December 2017, the two were sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment.
Jorge Luis Mendoza Cárdenas, commonly referred to by his alias La Garra, is a Mexican suspected drug lord and high-ranking leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), a criminal group based in Jalisco. Security forces suspect that La Garra heads the drug trafficking operations for the CJNG in the United States under Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the top leader of the criminal group. La Garra reportedly coordinates marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine shipments to Los Angeles, San Jose, Atlanta, and New York City from Mexico.
