Colombian corruption case latest overseas stain for the DEA
MIAMI — For years, Capt. Juan Pablo Mosquera rose through the ranks of Colombia’s national police, earning accolades from his bosses on his way to becoming the trusted supervisor of a unit that worked hand-in-glove with U.S. anti-narcotics agents.
Now he’s facing up to 20 years in a U.S. prison for allegedly betraying the Drug Enforcement Administration to the same drug traffickers they were jointly fighting.
His 2018 arrest and subsequent extradition to the U.S., which has not been previously reported, is another black eye for an elite DEA program to train and support foreign law enforcement that has been repeatedly subverted by corrupt cops and deadly leaks.
The rare prosecution of a once-standout U.S. ally follows a report this summer from a U.S. government watchdog that blasted the DEA’s leadership in Washington for failing to oversee its foreign law enforcement partners even in the aftermath of a string of well-publicized scandals.
“The DEA needs to be more vigilant of the operations that it’s conducting in foreign countries because the corruption is so rampant,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former Chief of International Operations.
Mosquera goes on trial Oct. 13 in Miami federal court on two counts of obstructing justice for allegedly selling evidence and information gathered by the vetted unit he oversaw to key targets of U.S. investigators.
It’s not clear what led the DEA to doubt the 37-year-old Mosquera — the three-page indictment says almost nothing about his alleged crimes.
But Juan Carlos Dávila, a co-defendant with a long history in Colombia’s criminal underworld, testified as part of a plea agreement that Mosquera enlisted him to try to sell information to a target of a DEA investigation: an American who was living in Colombia under a false identity.
The American, who was identified in court papers only by his initials P.L., is described as someone who ditched probation in Arkansas in the 1990s and remains a fugitive. That matches the criminal history of Patrick Liljebeck, who was indicted in Miami shortly after Mosquera’s arrest for conspiring to smuggle 50 kilograms of cocaine aboard a sailboat.
Unbeknownst to Dávila, a man he thought was the unnamed American’s associate was a confidential source working at the direction of the DEA.
“Mosquera corruptly used his position ... to access investigative information regarding DEA investigations and targets with the intent to make money from that information,” Dávila said in a proffer accompanying his plea agreement.
Dávila, who was reportedly arrested in 2013 on an Italian warrant for ties to the Sicilian mafia, agreed to testify against Mosquera in exchange for a reduced sentence. Others who may take the stand include five DEA agents and an unnamed Colombian law enforcement officer, according to court papers filed by prosecutors.
Prosecutors also intend to rely on extensive audio and video recordings of meetings between Dávila and DEA informants — none of which Mosquera himself appears to have attended.
Daniel Hentschel, an attorney for Mosquera,
declined to comment on the case, as did the U.S. attorney’s office and the DEA.
Mosquera, before his arrest, led a police squad in the city of Cali overseen by what’s known as the DEA’s “Sensitive Investigative Unit,” or SIU, the gold standard for its partnerships abroad. The program of vetted units was set up to help the DEA conduct investigations in foreign countries where the drug business begins but where its agents are guests and face more restrictions.
The DEA credits the
vetted units with some of the world’s biggest busts and the arrest of hundreds of capos. Selected agents receive five weeks of special training at the DEA Academy in Virginia and frequently leverage the Americans’ mentorship into top positions inside their country’s security forces. Since its start in the late 1990s, the program has expanded to more than 20 countries, including Thailand and Kenya.
To mitigate risks and prevent corruption, foreign agents are supposed to go through extensive vetting
that includes drug tests and polygraphs.
But a scathing Inspector General report this summer found that the DEA’s oversight of its SIU partners is insufficient and faults the agency for failing to learn lessons from a decade-long string of well-publicized scandals.
In Mexico, an SIU unit was the subject of U.S. congressional inquiries following reports that a drug cartel in 2011 carried out a savage massacre of dozens of civilians after receiving a leak from the vetted unit.