Luis Guillermo Angel, a.k.a. “Guillo,” is a former Medellin Cartel pilot and one of Colombia’s main drug traffickers, according to a 2021 counternarcotics investigation by the National Police.
Guillo began his drug trafficking career as a pilot for the Medellin Cartel and became close the Ochoa Clan, one of the founding crime families of the now-defunct drug trafficking organization.
In July 1992, the pilot became one the “Dirty Dozen,” a group of cartel members that decided to collaborate with the authorities to capture or kill Pablo Escobar, who had just escaped from prison.
While collaborating with justice, Guillo provided details about the cartel’s 1985 kidnapping of Alonso Cardenas, the grandson of Ochoa Clan patriarch Fabio Ochoca, the 1987 kidnapping of Cali Cartel drug trafficker Hugo Valencia, a.k.a. Fierro,” and the 1988 kidnapping of Conservative politician Andres Pastrana.
While helping the government dismantle what was left of the Medellin Cartel, the former cartel pilot created his own aviation company, Helicargo SA, according to Guillo’s LinkedIn profile.
In November 1992, President Cesar Gaviria issued Decree 1833 in which the government vowed that the 12 cartel snitches wouldn’t be prosecuted for their crimes.
The National Police and paramilitary group “Los Pepes” killed Escobar in Medellin in December 1993 and the cartel’s drug trafficking routes were divided between the Cali Cartel and Los Pepes.
In 2005, journalist Daniel Coronell made Guillo’s allegedly ongoing involvement in drug trafficking public and was forced to due to multiple death threats.
Guillo and Helicargo SA reportedly lost their licenses in 2008 because of the owner’s involvement in drug trafficking his financial support for the legal defense of Fabio Ochoa Jr, who had been extradited to the United States.
The former cartel pilot confirmed that, like former President Alvaro Uribe, he was a long-time friend of the Ochoa Clan, and told the newspaper he had sent the extradited cartel boss’s family between $400 and $450 thousand.
“The transfer was the result of payments for damages caused to a plane during an incident in Medellin,” which was in Helicargo’s workshop, according to Guillo.
“The transfer was made by an insurance company in London, it’s all legal,” the former cartel pilot added.
Helicargo continues to have a hangar on Bogota’s El Dorado airport, according to the Yellow Pages and alleged clients.
In 2009, journalist Maria Jimena Duzan accused the former cartel pilot of being behind a series of death threats against Supreme Court magistrates, lawmakers and government officials after Pastrana was elected president in 1998.
The prosecution began investigating the Guillo and his brother, Juan Gonzalo Angel, on money laundering charges in November 2020 and in March 2021, the Agency for Investigative Journalism reported that the National Police’s counternarcotics unit had added Guillo to its list of “invisible narcos” who allegedly ran much of Colombia’s cocaine exports with the use of front companies.
