Houston linked to covert route in cocaine bust

Houston linked to covert route in cocaine bust
4 arrested; tons of narcotics have flowed to Canada via Texas-Mexico


By DANE SCHILLER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Sneaking cocaine into the United States has long been the path to riches for drug cartels, but moving tons of the narcotic powder back out of the country — and right through Houston — was the alleged specialty of reputed gangsters snared by federal agents.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, arrested this week four men accused of being high-level traffickers who moved cocaine from the Texas-Mexico border to New York and Montreal, Canada.

And as part of their covert operations, the syndicate is said to have used trucks to move as much as 25 tons of the drug through Houston during a two-year period, with much of it temporarily hidden in local stash houses, according to authorities.

"That is like 25 elephants if you put it in a truck," Cpl. Elaine Lavergne, spokeswoman for the mounties, said of the amount.

The four people arrested are all Canadians: Miguel Torres, 36, Firmino Tavares, 51, Giovanni Somma, 40, and Gerardo Hurtado, 45.

They are accused of moving at least 35 tons of cocaine into Canada between 1996 and 2004, and of transporting the 25 tons from Texas to New York in 2002 and 2003.

The pipeline is unusual both in the amount of cocaine tied to one organization and that its cargo was smuggled not only into the United States, but also farther north into Canada.

"You don't see that everyday," Lavergne said. "It takes a lot of organization and contacts to do that."

She would not say where the cocaine crossed the U.S.-Mexico border or the Canadian border, or which trucking lines were involved.

Violet Szeleczky, of the DEA's Houston office, said the case grew out of an operation launched by a Corpus Christi-based task force including state, local and federal officers.

"It was being stored (in Houston) and then transported up," she said of the cocaine.

While the amount of cocaine may be eye-catching to the general public in the United States, Szeleczky noted cartels have been tied to more in a year.

In March 2007, the Coast Guard seized 21 tons of cocaine stashed aboard a ship off the coast of Panama.

That same year, 12 tons of cocaine was seized by Mexican authorities following a shootout in the coastal port of Tampico.

The Canadian transporters aren't believed to have loyalty to any one of the powerful drug cartels based in Mexico but rather delivered the narcotics to whoever hired them.

Once in Montreal, the connection was made with a biker gang and Italian mobsters, authorities said.

dane.schiller@chron.com
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