PABLO era un MONSTRUO, SATÁNICO Y TRAICIONERO: Carlos Lehder REVELA "TENÍA MÚLTIPLES PERSONALIDADES"

In this book written by Carlos Lehrer, called Life and Death of the Medellin Cartel, which has many revelations and is very easy to read, I found a phrase that caught my attention. When Pablo was furious, the earth trembled. Much has been said about Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the chief of chiefs, but very few can say that they were there as protagonists.

And among those very few is Carlos Leder Rivas, with whom we have the pleasure of being here today. Carlos, thank you for attending us here at El Quindio Hermoso Tuyo. It's great to meet you. I wanted to meet you a long, long time ago. In fact, I contacted your daughter, Monica, a long time ago, time, but we have achieved it today. Thank you, Rafael. I am very motivated and very grateful for allowing me this interview with you,

someone with such a legitimate and so true communication power, because truth rules. Thank you, Carlos. And then, when Pablo was furious, the earth trembled. I remember, because we are talking about history, not at the political level, but at the criminal level. delinquencial. Mi libro, como tú lo describes, es un libro en que yo he entregado mi testimonio personal, mis vivencias,

mi autobiografía, es mi testamento. is my will. I do not glamorize or ennoble smuggling or trafficking. No. I clearly establish that I have made immense mistakes, I explain them, and man's nature is to ask for forgiveness is Pablo Escobar Gaviria. I met him, and, as in the dark and secret world of drug trafficking, one negotiates with a great diversity of characters, of all calibers and morals,

but Pablo was someone very unique, very difficult to read, in quotation marks, very difficult to analyze. I have had, I consider it a virtue and it is a high intuition when I meet a new character. If I promptly decide if this man or woman is my friend or is possibly my enemy. So, in Pablo it is extremely difficult to discern because in my opinion he had multiple personalities. He approached me because I was successfully transporting to criminales que en el nivel de crimen se deleitaban cometiendo crímenes de toda índole. No me voy a excusar de los crímenes que yo cometí quebrantando la ley de...

pero yo no estoy a favor de la violencia. I am not in favor of violence. Pablo grew up in an environment, from a very young age, of violence, stabbing, robberies, robberies, etc. That's how he grew up. And in many ways, all Colombians, Colombia has played an irreversible role in our formation, including the elites that ruled us at that time. Pablo, in the phrase that you quote, who grew up giving more than the neighbor, killing more than the neighbor, stealing more than the neighbor.

And he was a leader of that mafia or crime. And he had his organization or his gang. And he was the captain of that ship. And to handle that violent hand, he had to be, I guess, y vi el más violento. Cuando él en veces comunicaba su enojo a varias personas que vi, lo hacía vociferante, palabras muy groseras, y con un lenguaje corporal and with a very severe body language, so much so that one could see the person sweat, tremble, the accused's legs trembled, and Pablo repressed and threatened him. So, that was the world of Pablo Escobar's organization.

And personal behavior. One of the most important factors in my book, which my person, paid the US Department of Justice the sentence they imposed on me. Which was a perpetual chain, originally, right? original mente sieto original mente dosentencia una de cadena perpetua y otra de ciento treinta y cinco años y me dijeron los abogados que el gobierno norteamericano fraguó esas dosentencias por si ganaba una de ellas en la corte de apelaciones la otra quedaría in case he won one of them in the appeal court.

The other one would stay. In other words, Carlos Lehder would never be a free man, nor would he return to Colombia. The Medellín Cartel was baptized and that title and that review was given between high officials of the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States, and the Washington DA. And we ask ourselves, why then all these

narco-novels and pronouncements and allegations and a lot of fiction and a lot of speculation that the Medellin Cartel... Never! Pablo, or Goyochoa, or the Mexican, or 800 or 1000 more small narcos that were there. And we got together and said, let's form this and that, and the boss of the organization. That never existed. There never existed a homogeneous organization where there was an Italian mafia boss and the others and there are hierarchies and ranks.

I eventually reached an agreement with the Washington DA and learned many of these factors, including how they created the title of the Medellín Cartel to apply a legal form of law that is conspiracy. In Colombia we don't have it, but when they put the Medellín Cartel, it fit with the idea of the United States to make us in charge of conspiracy, to all. And it started out this way. There were thousands of small narcos in Colombia who had their connection or their acquaintance in the United States, and the one from the United States would say, look, send me one or two kilos of coke. And the man said, yes, here it is worth X silver, and there it is worth 50 times more, but there is no one to send them.

Then we emerged, the international drug dealers, the transport companies, the smugglers, the exporters of coke. So in Medellin, we grew from 22 to 26 offices that received coke from these thousands of small drug dealers. And I charged, let's say, $6,000 a kilo for delivering it in Miami. Pablo charged $5,500. Jorge Ochoa charged, let's say, $4,500. And there were many of these drug dealers who had the transport to the United States,

it was through Mexico, who sent in their planes or in boats, in ships, to Mexico. And already from Mexico, the Mexicans put it on the road to the United States. That is how the DEA contemplated in Colombia, which was Muslim. Offices where the food was exported and marketed. Just like there were, perhaps, many more offices where the money was laundered.

We delivered the money in the United States, in a city, and they received it in Medellín and gave it to you. Everything was totally legal, but at that time, the laws, we are talking about 40 years ago, did not apply to many of those crimes. that there was never an organization under the command of Pablo Escobar. In fact, when I met Pablo many years ago, I had my own organization of drug traffickers, Jorge Ochoa too, and 20 or 30 more have their own organization. Maybe some of us were more notorious because we were better smugglers. We didn't lose the stuff they gave us.

Because it happened sometimes that these offices in Medellín had to close because they dropped two, three, four loads, and the drug dealers didn't take them anymore because they said, this man does not know. What you are telling me is that Washington was baptized as the Medellín Cartel, could they be accused of a figure that did not exist here, which was the

concerto to delinquir, right? Totally, you are absolutely correct. One of the specific and explicit factors is that you see in the same name, Medellín Cartel, cartel means a list of drug dealers, then they put 26 drug dealers who managed the offices, each one independent of exportation. But there was the factor of the exchange of information between us. All that was often shared. That is a conspiracy in the United States. And before we continue with Pablo's story, I also want to ask you about the Mexican. Your success at that time, you had a great success, was the logistics of bringing cocaine from the Bahamas, among others, to the United States. Tell us a little bit about that, how you established it, and why you became so eager.

I had that weakness, I would say, of becoming addicted to the dollars I was receiving. And instead of withdrawing from that business after I had a little farm or something, I began to perfect and plan massive forms of export to the United States, but not for Mexico. Because many of the drug traffickers in Medellín had problems in the transport of drugs in Mexico, which sometimes stole the cocaine in Mexico. And violence came, and I to get involved in violence.

So I was looking for a more technical way to carry out that transport. I always took into account that the consequences of an arrest would cost me a perpetual chain.

So I sat down to plan strategically and logistically how I could carry out this smuggling.

And as I specify in the book, I chose to look for a base of operations, a trampoline, near the United States. So, I managed, with George Young, a North American drug lord, to hire a North American pilot, coincidentally, who was a lawyer, and he began to transport cocaine on his own plane from Cordoba, Colombia, to Florida. And he had, on an island in the Bahamas called Stanislauski, a cabin. And there, in Stanislauski, we filled up the tank,

there was no police or authority. And there I learned from the Bahamas. The pilots and the captains of ships or pirate boats, they were all North Americans, those who came to the Bahamas to pick up the cargo and took it to their country. That was an idea that was extremely safe,

secret, and at that time, and I emphasize this because today that is impossible to do, but at that time there was no GPS, but always with Americans. So the abundance of coke benefited both the North American and Colombian drug traffickers. And that's where you bought the island, Norman, and turned it into that great Hong Kong. It increased the demand for transport in Medellín. We sent Carlos, and he didn't... I never lost a shipment.

So much so that when I went to trial in the United States, they didn't present any... because they had never taken me. I had the historical benefit that in the Bahamas, the government of London, the government of England,

decided to give the Bahamas to the natives. So I saw there that the new government of the Bahamas was not an English government with their naval forces, their navy, their air force, their army, and police. No. It was a new government of natives. me the Prime Minister directly for $150,000 a month for the protection of my person, my family and my territory. That was when I promptly proceeded to buy the island. How much did it cost?

I had several houses of several houses on the island,

but the hotel was the owner of the runway, the marina and the hotel.

That was 70% of the island. The island had 120 square meters. A prime location. A part of the hotel cost 1.4 million, another part cost 800,000, something in terms of irrisorial money. And I say irrisorial because eventually, over the years, the Bahamas government as it happens with the goods or properties of the drug traffickers, confiscated it and sold it for 41 million dollars. The greatest treasure of that island was that it was registered as a private island, that is, the owner of the island had it. There was no police, customs, or immigration. No foreigner, or Bahamian, could say,

I'm coming here, this is my island, private, I have to ask for permission. That's what allowed me to develop the island in a center, in a South American transport hall to the United States. When it was at its peak, how many planes did you drive and how many tanks did you have? I remember that one of the first industrial actions that I took, industrial and security measures. When I bought the island, I built two large hangars for planes right on the Aterzá runway.

The photos of the hangars are in the book. We bought them in the United States, the engineers came and installed it. So, in those two large hangars for planes, I could store six planes. I also extended the dock for deeper boats. I also extended the dock of the lagoon. And eventually I closed the hotel to build a new hotel, a totally new one.

But, tactically, when I closed the hotel, no tourist the DEA agency, the most powerful anti-narcotics agency in the modern world. They sent infiltrators, they sent spies, they sent boats, planes, guards. With the hangars, the DEA planes flew over, but they didn't have X-rays to see what was in the hangar. At night, the landing strip, which was in Sanchez, we parked three large trucks so that there would be no landing, a night invasion. How old were you at that time? I was 24 years old. 24 years old and with all that?

Yes, I did everything possible to carry out a very well-. One of the guarantees was to do my daily and meticulously, soberly tasks and to achieve it. And that is why I was given a sentence of the size of the one I mentioned in the United States. You left that chain of perpetuity and you are here with us because you testified against General Noriega, General Panameño, and you made a deal with the States government. The coincidental and very beneficial fact for my existence was that Washington, the same government that had given me a perpetual chain, spoke to my lawyer and proposed to give me my freedom.

Freedom. If I assisted them, I would be rehabilitated genuinely. I would confess my sins to the government and to the public, to the public, the jury, where General Noriega was going to be sitting, I was testifying and I was expressing the participation of General Noriega and his commanders in the trafficking of us, those of us who were reviewed as the Medellin Cartel. That was the deal I made with Washington.

I kept my word, and Washington kept their word. And that's why we're here today, talking. And they sentenced Noriega. They sentenced Noriega, and the judge sentenced him to 40 years. And before you returned to Pablo Escobar,

how did you meet him? In that golden age of Norman Island, how much cocaine did you pass daily to the United States? And how much money did you get for that cocaine? I think that, without speculating or glorifying those crimes, and I said it in front of the judge and jury in the trial of General Noriega,

I managed to introduce about 100 tons of cocaine to the United States. 100 tons? 100 tons. 100 tons. How much per kilo put in Los Angeles? In my reminiscences, when I was 19 years old, I was hired by a mobster from Medellín,

whose name was Don Arturo, to go in my truck. I had a Ford 250, as I tell it in the book. I would go 4,000 kilometers away, through mountains and the pavement hardly existed, to Bolivia. I would load it with coke to Bolivia

and return to Medellín with it. At the time I started, in California, they paid $70,000 for a kilo of coke. In Bolivia, it cost $1,000 a kilo. And then Carlos was the king of logistics. And how does he know Pablo, and how does he know the Mexican,

to go through them, telling this story? First I met Gustavo Gaviria, who was his cousin. Why? Washing my money from Coca-Cola in Miami. I brought new cars, bought in Miami, and I had an agency of cars in Medellin.

It was called Leder Auto. It was the highest level. And there, many new immigrants and drug lords came with a handful of dollars to buy me one or two new cars. And little by little they identified with me as drug lords. One of them was Gustavo Gaviria. So, Gustavo, among the several cars he bought for me,

he bought me two Porsches and gave one to Pablo. They later raced, not in those cars, but in others. They were very fond of cars. And I started doing business, tentatively, with Gustavo. Gustavo told me, I'm going to introduce you to someone who wants to meet Luis Pablo.

We went to a property of Jorge Ochoa, and there was Pablo. He is a character that is extremely difficult to qualify. It was not pleasant to deal with him, but I was a businessman and if he had business, we talked about business. But we had a relationship like that for several years. Then I met the people in Naples. And you also met the Mexican. Tell me about the circumstances and how it was to deal with one and the other, their personalities. But when he accepted your friendship, your relationship, your commitment, he was an upright man.

He wasn't going to betray you, he wasn't going to kill you, he wasn't going to steal from you. He was your friend. A friend in the sense of backing you up in your business, being honorable among criminals, and to respect your procedures. His language was not very rich in substance, but very severe in his very direct expressions. a very Colombian person and a teacher, in the sense of a visionary in the illegal business of the Cucuta. Why a visionary? Because in Colombia there were no laboratories that produced the Cucuta. And he was the precursor of that industry,

bringing the leaves or the pasta and producing it right here in Colombia, not in Bolivia or Peru. He was the man who bought some indigenous people in Tranquilandia, started with a laboratory, then two, and then there were about 20, and it became such a mess that the US government financed a great operation that shattered everything.

As for personality, that man hurt me a lot when I killed him. Why did it hurt you? It hurt me because I appreciated him a lot. He was a sincere man within the secret world of organized crime, of smuggling cocaine. At that level, he was an honest man within the environment. of a man who was honest, serious, and his word was gold, versus Pablo, with his multiple personalities. Sometimes you would wonder who you were talking to.

An anecdote I put in the book is once he tells me I suffered a second, they hit me here TM19, sir. The Mexican told me Carlos make sure you hire security men and bodyguards who have blood on their hands because if they don't have blood it doesn't work

if they haven't had a disorder in emergency if they don't have it, it's no use. If they haven't heard, in an emergency, if they haven't received bullets, if they haven't fired a bullet, if they haven't killed anyone, how are they going to defend you? If those who are going to kill you are tremendous. You told me that he was a person of the word and that he did not betray you. I speak if't betray you. Pablo did betray you. Let's go back to the multiple personalities factor.

Pablo, one day, was the eloquent Pablo, even a politician. I think that Pablo, in a way, had something revolutionary, because the passion with which he attacked the extradition treaty, which we already knew that the president had not signed, but there were state officials who were chasing us,

knowing that the treaty was illegitimate, unconstitutional. In a way, Pablo had a modus operandi in the face of that situation, which aroused in him a lot of rationalism, a lot of logic. Pablo, before a single shot against the Colombian government, was a congressman, denouncing the extradition treaty. On December 12, 1986,

the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia ruled and sent a jurisprudence that the treaty was unquestionable, that is, unconstitutional. And you write in the book, Pablo Escobar was always a leader of the cartel, which inspired respect, but he was not my boss. Totally, exactly.

He did not give orders to orders. We negotiated, and sometimes he would stop the negotiation because he sometimes said so much, and we would say, no, or here, and I would say, it doesn't work there. Or with these people. I would analyze the people I had to work with. I would say, Pablo, you know I prefer to work with this other guy. Many of the issues with Pablo, I preferred to negotiate with Gustavo Gaviria. Why?

Gustavo Gaviria was very cunning. He was very practical. He understood that I was one of the most successful international drug traffickers. He was much smarter than Pablo. Now, courage doesn't mean intelligence,

but Gustavo Gaviria was much smarter than Pablo Escobar. But Pablo began to look at you in the fact that in a certain sense he imposed himself on you. In the field of violence, yes. It is very difficult to analyze and concentrate on who this guy was who eventually became a monster. Or at times he became, when he was convenient, a monster. Or at times, he became a monster when he felt like it. Pablo was so brave that he didn't look the next day.

He was so brave that he would do stupid things. Like the one who throws himself into a river and crosses it without knowing how to swim. In my book, I baptized him, I titled my book Life and Death, because at the end of the book I explain how Pablo starts now, the mafia Pablo Ampón starts to kill us, the one-on in the cartel one by one. And certainly, retaliation was quick. And he also tried to eliminate me in his estate in Naples. I tell it in the book, I can't tell you everything,

because then I don't give it to you in the wall. No, because that's interesting, what you're going to tell me now. And that's why I asked you that the Mexican did not betray and Pablo did. Because also in the book you describe that Pablo was a monster. And we are talking about him betraying his companions and he began to kill his companions. y estamos hablando de que traicionó a sus compañeros y comenzó a matar compañeros y no estamos hablando de los Moncada y los Galeano posteriormente, estamos hablando de antes, cierto? Antes, desde antes. Cuéntanos un poco sobre ese episodio de que él comienza a matar a sus propios compañeros, en tu time, when you had not been extradited.

I was in the Elvichada jungle, because I was being chased by the Colombian authorities, along with the DEA, to be captured and taken to the United States. First, on the radio, they tell me from Medellín, through radio and telephone, they call me and say,

Ma,

Pablo Correa. Pablo Correa was a drug lord. A gentleman of day and a drug lord of night, that's a phrase. He was a gentleman. He was a serious man, he was an athlete,

he supported the soccer teams. A partner of yours, a partner, partner, partner for many years. And he brought planes with Coca-Cola from Bolivia and I received them in Los Llanos. In my mind, at that moment, I was in a state of chaos. I said, no, this is going to be a war, because Pablo Escobar is going to form an army and he is going to go against whoever he has given the order to. That week, I read the magazine Semana, which I read the magazine, Semana, and I see that they have also sent Alonso Cárdenas,

who is also my partner and partner of Pablo Correa. So I'm left with my mouth open. This is a war against us. We don't know who, because I'm in the Elvish jungle. So I look and observe and say, this is a colossal catastrophe. Alonso Cárdenas was also a knight of the day and a drug lord of the night. of of sex and charge 20 million dollars for each one and let me tell you that they no longer had

business with Pablo or wanted to have business with Pablo Escobar later I know Rodrigo Murillo, another drug lord.

They take away his fortune and then they kill him too.

So I say, Pablo needs help, Pablo Escobar. Because I don't see any reaction from him. What will going on? I left the jungle, the bichada, where I was. That was controlled territory for FARC. I had already met with Tirofijo in the Casa Verde. And I proposed him a business that would allow me

to settle in the territories he controlled. He gave me permission, we did a business that would allow me to take over the territories he controlled. He gave me permission, and we did a business. A business of 10% of the coca. Of 10% of what I produced. So I paid them 10% of what I earned. I made a decision

that was based on my faith that Pablo Escobar, at least, is a man who is not going to be involved in the Marcos sect, much less my colleagues. So, with faith, I went to Medellín. Was Pablo Escobar uno trató de hacer envió un el jefe de si de la sesión en la hacienda nápoles y después me entregó a las autoridades he handed me over to the authorities of Colombia and the DEA.

And then?

In Bichada, I contacted Pablo's radio operator, who was called Pimina. He was Pablo's gunman, but he was very expert in communications. He gave me the green light, yes, come to Hacienda Nápoles. I arrived at Hacienda Nápoles

and the Mexican Rodríguez was there and Gustavo Gaviria was there and quickly Gacha took me to the hospital. He told me, don't go asking Pablo about the dead. If I ask him, he was a loud voice, a serious man. How was he, Pablo? He was energized, with his command, his leader, his territory, his estate in Naples.

Pablo had been very economically bad when he had fled to Panama and Nicaragua, because the government had taken 17 planes from him. When they took the plane to Bonilla, we were going to that right now. Pablo committed that barbarity, totally unnecessary, to the Minister of Justice of Colombia. I talked to Pablo and I think we were a couple of days in But he didn't say a word about the Aztecs. I began my investigation and eventually, discerning between the different personalities of this individual

and the threats he could pose to me. First of all, I found out that he wasn't looking for the security guards of the other members of the cartel. He wasn't doing that. I went on with my investigation and eventually established that he was the one who had kidnapped them. And in the case of Pablo Correa,

he had kidnapped Pablo Correa, he had kidnapped Rodrigo Murillo, but I don't have enough evidence to say that he did it. Alonso Cárdenas. I checked that he did it, but not that he did it. Possibly Alonso, who was injured when he did it,

died of the severity of the wounds. Do you discover that?

And he discovers that I discovered. I have a person with whom I have fraternized in the possible way that you can fraternize in that world. Her name is Pinina. She was one of his greatest associates. Yes.

And Pinina sympathized with my cause. Pinina, for example, told me that, since Pablo had ordered the yuca, who was a gunman, he grew up with that. And he rebelled against Pablo

because Pablo had ordered those members of the cartel to be killed. The yuca. The yuca. So the person who told me, told me no. He rebelled and then they immediately gave the order to liquidate him.

And we are almost going to get to where they try to kill you and then they turn you over to Pablo Escobar. Was it worth it to kill Lara Bonilla? I think it is the most fatal, brutal mistake that Pablo Escobar has made against Colombian citizens. Now, Pablo was more of a narco than the DEA, the army and the Colombian police. So, one of Pablo's personalities was, and the term fits, a satanic person. Pablo organized a group, gave them police uniforms,

and they fell into the office of Rafico Cardona, my friend and partner, and killed the whole office in Medellín. The secretary, the cook, the chauffeur, Rafico, the lady, the driver, the this, the waiter, the lady, the... and since he was so connected with the authorities and with the politicians,

nothing happened. And that was Guillermo Cal It's very political. It has very political ramifications. In fact, in my opinion, it was requested by a political source to solve this problem. But I'm not going to go into that. Carlos is telling me that with Guillermo Cano was not only totally unnecessary, but

there was no reason to justify it.

Why?

Because there was no longer the extradition treaty between Colombia, because the Supreme Court had said that it was unconstitutional, then why ... a journalist who speaks for those who have no voice? Well, that's my feeling and my reasoning, but the business and the reasons why Pablo sent those messages to this man were not necessarily due to extradition, I can tell you that.

And to finish, how did you get your extradition and who gave it to you? Time revealed many secrets. I found out two months after being in prison in the United States, I found out from my lawyer that in a document it said that Pablo Escobar Gaviria had handed me over to the DEA. And of course, with the Colombian police.

And they were going to give him benefits. I don't know if Pablo's eventually had was part of that benefit, but I know that it happened like that, that he turned me in. Another very clear situation is that years later, he welcomes what the wise president César Gaviria Trujillo, he puts the law 30-30, or coordinates the function of this law, where any drug trafficker in Colombia who wants to submit to the authorities can be submitted, and would pay a maximum of 10 years in prison. Pablo accepted that law. They already did an operation near Guarni.

They arrested you in the morning, and in the afternoon you were already arriving in the United States. In the afternoon, the North American plane was arriving, yes, the DEA aircraft, landed in Guantanamo, at the American military base in Guantanamo, to fill up with fuel. And we arrived at night in Tampa, Florida, United States. The same day. Years later, I established,

to fully answer your question, that at the Nutibara Hotel in Medellín, I was in Medellín, people sent by Pablo Escobar met with the US DEA at the Nutibara Hotel, in a room, and there they negotiated in a room in a room, and they negotiated. And then Pablo said, or rather, Pablo's emissaries, that they were going to hand me over

alive or dead. And... dead wasn't as easy as it was proven, but, It wasn't as easy as it was proven. But, in the circumstances, in the facts that happen, many times, 40 or 45 years ago, the Colombian police, or the army, or the F2,

when they captured an important person, they had the order to take it down and put a gun. Fortunately, they did not apply that so-called escape law, etc. That is why we are here together today, because I survived many circumstances where my life was about to end, and it didn't. And in the book you say that Lulu, your girlfriend, one day told you, a and my sufferings, because 33 years of prison torture were extremely difficult, humiliating. And I could have avoided that if I had listened

to those words of my wife at that time. And I was obsessed, obsessed, passionate about my leadership in drug trafficking, in international cocaine trafficking. I had become addicted, not to cocaine, because at the level I was operating, my mental order had to be very clear, very defined. I couldn't get my brain drunk to operate, or fly planes, drugs.

But the Colombian woman is an extraordinary, visionary, sensitive, and very brave woman.

And she gave me such wise advice, and I, stubbornly, did not accept it. the I'm going to go back to the beginning of the book. La mujer colombiana es el epicentro de nuestra vida y existencia y motivación. I am bound to many things, and all of them are good. And I am bound to my mother. I am bound to my mother. I pray for you. I pray for you. I pray for you. I pray for you. I pray for you. I pray for you.

I pray for you. I pray for you. I'm going to be doing a lot of things. I feel very privileged to interview you. I've been looking for you for many years. And well, thank you. And well, thank you. It's an honor to share these stories with you.