By Alex Pashley
LIMA, Peru
The alleged mastermind of a criminal network that infiltrated judges, police, and congressmen – who was wanted in Peru – was captured in Colombia, President Ollanta Humala announced Thursday.
Rodolfo Orellana was arrested in the city of Cali in a joint maneuver by Peru, Colombia and U.S. anti-drug agency operatives on Wednesday, Humala told radio station RPP while on a state visit to Rome.
Orellana is the suspected ringleader of an organization that amassed $100 million through money laundering, real estate trafficking and extortion, according to Peru’s public prosecutor.
He is also accused of swindling the state out of 56 million soles ($19.1 million) for infrastructure projects paid up front to businesses that never carried them out.
At large since July, police began monitoring Orellana 45 days ago after intelligence showed he crossed the Ecuadorian border.
The capture put “a more difficult hurdle before criminals,” Humala told RPP.
“It represents the dismantling of a mafia structure very close to the government branches,” said Ricardo Soberon, Peru's former anti-narcotics chief and director of the Center of Research for Drugs and Human Rights.
“This network – judges, policemen, soldiers, journalists, regional governors, mayors – has importantly been caught."
The capture is a coup for Humala, whose presidency has been buffeted recently by other high-profile fugitives, including the former press manager of his unsuccessful 2006 presidential bid.
A recent spate of contract killings in the Lima region have heightened public fears about security, pressuring the interior minister “to provide results to the national media,” Soberon added.
The Orellana case has regularly held front pages, and a poll published Monday showed that 45 percent of those surveyed said the government had “no intention” of capturing Orellana.
The tentacles of the 50-year-old lawyer’s network implicate several senior officials, including the current attorney general, a state attorney and two congressmen.
Orellana’s ex-lawyer, Benedicto Jimenez, was jailed for 18 months in October, after investigations linked him with Orellana. – Jimenez is a former detective credited with the 1992 capture of Abimael Guzman, the head of the Shining Path terrorist group and Peru’s most notorious criminal.
A report by anti corruption officials said Orellana had supplied the now imprisoned leader of the Ancash region, Cesar Alvarez, with information obtained by intercepting phone calls. Alvarez is jailed on corruption charges and the murder of two political rivals.
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