The brother of a former President of Colombia’s Supreme Court has been arrested after the United States had linked him to drug trafficking, local media reported on Thursday.
Rafael de Jesus Ricaurte was arrested in the Caribbean city of Santa Marta after the Southern District Court of New York had charged him with undisclosed crimes related to drug trafficking and ordered an international arrest warrants against the prominent member of the coastal elite.
According to newspaper El Tiempo, the suspect was arrested with a second drug trafficking suspect by DEA agents with the help of prosecution officials.
Ricaurte is the brother of former Supreme Court President Francisco Javier Ricaurte and a leading member of the regional branch of President Juan Manuel Santos’ governing U Party.
According to local media, the suspect was the victim of an assassination attempt by alleged members of the Oficina de Envigado, a Medellin-based crime syndicate, in 2011.
In that same year, Ricaurte unsuccessfully ran in regional elections aiming to join the Assembly of the Magdalena state.
The suspect’s brother is not just the former president of the Supreme Court, but also an ex-member of the Superior Judicial Council, the court that manages the entire judicial branch of Colombia.
According to political website La Silla Vacia, the former magistrate continues to have influence in the courts in spite of his resignation in 2014 due to alleged influence peddling.
According to the ex-wife of Fabio Ochoa, who founded the Medellin Cartel with Pablo Escobar in the 1970s, the former Supreme Court president had been working together with the crime family to illegally obtain plots of land in the Caribbean. Ricaurte has denied this.
In spite the scandals, “he is the power behind the throne,” an anonymous source within the judicial branch told the website.
The Ricuarte family is not the first elite family to get into trouble with justice over ties to drug trafficking, not even in recent years.
The same happened to former Interior and Justice Minister Fabio Valencia, currently one of the leaders of the Democratic Center party of former President Alvaro Uribe.
The then-minister saw his brother Guillermo, the then-director of the Medellin prosecution office, imprisoned in 2009 after prosecutors found out he was doing favors for neo-paramilitary group the Urabeños and the now-defunct Norte del Valle Cartel.
Sources
Francisco Javier Ricaurte Gómez (La Silla Vacia)
Presidente de la Judicatura denunciará a esposa de Fabio Ochoa por calumnia (El Espectador)
Ricaurte, el magistrado que no quería dejar su silla (El Tiempo)
‘Fui víctima de una decisión ilegal’: Francisco Ricaurte (Superior Judiciary Council)
Cayeron cuatro miembros de la ‘Oficina de Envigado’, en Santa Marta (El Heraldo)
Las autoridades investigan atentado contra ex candidato a la Asamblea del departamento del Magdalena (El Informador)
Capturan a hermano de exmagistrado de la Judicatura por cargos de narcotráfico (El Espectador)
