Brazil's Federal Police arrested on Tuesday a top leader of Colombia's biggest cocaine cartel -- the Norte del Valle Cartel, the police said in a statement.
Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, one of the drug lords who allegedly controlled the Cartel, was captured in a raid after dawn at a house in a gated community on Sao Paulo's outskirts.
The operation was aimed at breaking up a ring that laundered drug profits in Brazil. But only Abadia's arrest has been reported up to the present.
The Colombian drug lord was accused of shipping cocaine since the 1990s and ordering the murders of police and informants in the United States and Colombia.
U.S. officials said they would seek extradition of the alleged drug lord with a nickname of "Chupeta," and wanted him on a bounty of 5 million dollars.
The U.S. Department of State described him as "extremely violent" and estimated his fortune at 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.
Police said the operation received support from law enforcement agencies in the United States, Argentina, Spain and Uruguay, which exchanged information provided by investigations on drug trafficking and money laundering in their countries.
Brazilian police charged the cartel of transporting a large amount of drugs up to Brazil, from where it was shipped to the U.S. and Europe.
Ramirez Abadia joined the Norte del Valle Cartel in 2002 after spending six years in prison. When he surrendered to the Colombian Police in 1996, he confessed to having shipped 23 tons of cocaine to the United States.
Source: Xinhua
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