The Costa Rican authorities on Thursday arrested alleged Colombian drug trafficker Alexander Leudo Nieves, wanted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Public Safety Minster Mario Zamora announced.
The Costa Rican authorities on Thursday arrested alleged Colombian drug trafficker Alexander Leudo Nieves, wanted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Public Safety Minster Mario Zamora announced.
Leudo Nieves, who was living in Costa Rica, “was under investigation for two years for his alleged relationship with the organization led by Silvio Montaño Vergara,” another Colombian drug trafficker, Zamora said at a press conference.
The minister explained that the Colombian’s arrest was part of an operation by the Anti-Drug Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office against organized crime, in which searches were conducted in fifteen different locations in three of the country’s provinces, San José, Puntarenas (in western Costa Rica), and Heredia (in northern Costa Rica).
As a result of the operation, ten individuals were detained, seven Costa Ricans and three Colombians (one of them Leudo), who were members of a cocaine-trafficking ring. Zamora said that the drugs were brought to Costa Rica from Colombia, by way of Panama, and were transported to Mexico from here.
“This organization is linked to two cocaine seizures made on 29 April, of 40 kilos of cocaine, and last year on 1 June, of 56 kilos” of the same drug, both in the city of San José, a statement by the Public Prosecutor’s Office specified.