Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday that both the director of the National Police and the Prosecutor General will investigate the “possible presence” of Mexican drug cartels in Colombia’s west.
“We have already given instructions to the [National] police director [José Roberto Leon Riano], together with the Prosecutor General, to investigate the truth to these rumors [of Mexican cartel activity],” said Santos on Thursday, while speaking in Tumaco, a port city in the western Nariño department.
The president stated that while there was no concrete information, “Several people have told me that rumors of [Mexican] cartel presence, particularly the Sinaloa cartel, in the [western] department of Nariño are growing.”
In late January 2013 Colombian police, in tandem with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), arrested an alleged drug trafficker and Sinaloa cartel supplier, Pedro Luis Zamora.
MORE: Colombia, DEA arrest Sinaloa cartel supplier
While back in early January it was reported that the nephew of Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman had been in Colombia to do business with various Colombian criminal organizations.
MORE: Nephew of Sinaloa cartel boss ‘El Chapo’ may be in Colombia
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest and arguably most powerful drug trafficking organization.
