LatinNews Daily - 04 April 2022

Colombia: On 25 March Carlos Antonio Moreno Tuberquía, alias ‘Nicolás’, the second-in-command to Dairo Antonio Úsaga David (‘Otoniel’), Colombia’s most wanted drug trafficker and leader of the powerful Clan del Golfo drug trafficking organisation (DTO), was extradited to the US. This followed the rejection by Colombia’s supreme court (CSJ) of a final appeal to delay his extradition. Both men had been named, along with 15 others, in a series of indictments announced in 2015 by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) as a “coordinated strike against Colombia’s largest and most influential drug trafficking and armed bacrim criminal group”. The indictments cite a string of charges including “operating continuing criminal enterprises, participating in international cocaine trafficking conspiracies, and using firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes”. Moreno was detained in 2018 by Colombian authorities and spent three years in prison before President Iván Duque announced on 13 December 2021 that he had signed a resolution to formally extradite him to the US. In January 2022, Moreno’s legal team petitioned the courts to delay extradition on the grounds that he had yet to face judgement for crimes committed in Colombia. It was this request that the CSJ rejected.

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