The ‘New Drug Trafficking Board’: What We Know About the Network Petro Connects to the Attack on Miguel Uribe

“Just as a hypothesis, but with very strong indications that have reached very high leaders of the opposition and us, is that the author of the attack would be the mafia with international presence,” said Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, regarding the attack against opposition pre-candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay. “The killers seek for us to kill each other, weaken the state, and advance their control over the illicit economy. Within the drug trafficking board based in Dubai and Colombia, there are those I named specifically to the country.” In recent months, the president has denounced a plan to assassinate him, always pointing towards an unknown actor: the “new drug trafficking board.” According to the Colombian president, this is a criminal network that directs the main illegal cocaine businesses in Latin America from the United Arab Emirates. Without official confirmations about its existence, the president has insisted that these are bosses controlling crime in Colombia under the orders of Julio Lozano Pirateque, alias Patricia, an emerald trader residing in the Arab country and rival of the deceased czar Victor Carranza.

The board was the protagonist of the presidential address on June 2nd, where Petro reappeared after being eclipsed for 48 hours, including a notable absence from a summit of Heads of State he was hosting. After arguing via X that he had concealed himself to protect his life, he returned to what he has described as a multinational structure made up of Spaniards, Albanians, Mexicans, Italians, Colombians, and a Paraguayan, with networks in politics, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Police in Colombia. He also mentioned that they have tentacles in other countries. “They have murdered more than 185 electoral candidates, in Mexico, in Ecuador, including a presidential candidate we are facing an offensive for the takeover of the State in much of Latin America by the mafia,” he wrote this Tuesday.

In the meeting of the Council of Ministers on February 4th, Petro assured that they have attempted to assassinate him four times since he took office on August 7, 2022. He spoke of missile purchases to shoot down his plane, a plan to blow up a truck loaded with dynamite, and the installation of snipers near the Casa de Nariño, the presidential palace in Bogotá. He has also pointed to the board as being behind the murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci in Cartagena de Indias in 2022, and the identical homicides in Bogotá of two emerald traders, Juan Sebastián Aguilar Pedro Pechuga, and Hernando Sánchez.

In May, the newspaper El Tiempo reported that two officials from the National Directorate of Intelligence were coordinating a trip to the United Arab Emirates by presidential order, to speak with ex-drug traffickers and Colombian businessmen residing there, to investigate the board. The Prosecutor’s Office has stated that it does not identify this board. “In the investigative processes being carried out in the Specialized Directorate against Drug Trafficking, no evidence has been obtained or received regarding the existence of a self-styled ‘Drug Trafficking Board’ based in the Middle East, its members, or any potential interference in Colombia. As a result, there are no open investigations in this context,” it stated in response to this newspaper’s inquiry.

Petro, however, insists that he possesses intelligence information that indicates otherwise. A source close to the government explains that this information suggests that high-level drug traffickers like Uruguayan Sebastián Marset, wanted by justice and suspected of consolidating the First Uruguayan Cartel (PCU), a transnational organization with influence in that country, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil, are part of the board. According to the specialized media Insight Crime, Marset embodies a new generation of South American drug traffickers operating with sophisticated methods and transcontinental networks, and he is accused of being behind the murder of prosecutor Marcelo Pecci. In 2021, he was detained in Dubai for having a false passport but was released.

The information that has reached the president also includes Dritan Gjika, an Albanian who established a cocaine trafficking network from Ecuador and was captured on May 25 in Abu Dhabi. The neighboring country has requested his extradition to answer for drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime. He is considered one of the main figures facilitating the expansion of Albanian mafias in Latin America and key to turning the port of Guayaquil into part of the cocaine export route to Europe, in an operation involving Colombian, Ecuadorian, and European partners.

Another name that has circulated in the presidential office when mentioning the new board is Alejandro Salgado Vega, El Tigre. He is said to be the most wanted drug trafficker in Spain, who is rumored to be hiding in Dubai. According to the European country’s Anti-Drug Prosecutor, he is part of a network that trafficked large amounts of cocaine hidden in pineapples between 2020 and 2021.

The main focus of the Colombian government is on Lozano, the emerald trader who served a six-year sentence in the United States for drug trafficking and money laundering, has been an informant for the DEA, and resides in Dubai. “Julio Lozano Pirateque, a citizen of Dubai, Colombian, is killing emerald traders because he wants to take over the emeralds. For some reason, he believes the president is his enemy,” said Petro in the controversial Council of Ministers on February 4.

Lozano was involved in a case of laundering illicit money in Independiente Santa Fe, a traditional Bogotá football team, three decades ago. An American prosecutor determined that Lozano, with several partners, used the club to launder nearly $1.5 billion. In Colombia, he has been linked to the financing of a narcolaboratory on a farm owned by former ambassador Fernando Sanclemente’s family, near Bogotá. Otoniel, the top commander of the Clan del Golfo, points him out in an audio intercepted by authorities for sending cocaine shipments and being involved in the murder of his former partner Luis Caicedo. In the only interview he has granted, Lozano denied any link to the criminal world to El Tiempo.

Beyond these intelligence data, information remains scarce. In Mexico, there are no public indications of a board with bosses from that country, although Lozano Pirateque has been mentioned as a possible witness in the trial against Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.

The presence of drug traffickers of various nationalities in the United Arab Emirates is a fact. What has not yet been demonstrated is whether they operate in a coordinated manner, as a large global criminal organization. Elizabeth Dickinson, an analyst from Crisis Group, explains that this presence of drug traffickers is relatively recent, from the last five years, or less. “There is a world of organized crime with a white collar there. Many financiers, investors, or influential people can organize shipments, but they do not necessarily form part of a unique structure that allows them to work together,” she states.

Petrit Baquero, a historian and expert in drug trafficking and emerald economics, agrees, stating that the dynamics of illegal economies make it difficult to think that the bosses act as a block. “Drug trafficking is in constant change and transformation. Many of these networks are established to carry out a single business. Then they disappear. One day a drug trafficker may do business with the ELN, another day with the FARC dissidents, another day with the Clan del Golfo, and yet another with an independent drug trafficker.”

According to Baquero, “Colombia is full of foreign drug traffickers who do not need Colombians to deliver routes, as they have their own.” In his view, Petro’s reference evokes the “board of drug trafficking,” a term coined around 2010 by international drug agencies and the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office to describe the reconfiguration of cartels after the fall of the major bosses of the 1990s. At that time, second-level figures like Lozano Pirateque filled the void. “As it comes back onto the radar, they label it as a ‘new board,’ referring to a phenomenon the country has already experienced,” he explains. However, it was never proved to be a unified organization. So far, neither has this.