A report from the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI), to which EL PAÍS has had access, reveals how the tentacles of the New Drug Trafficking Board (NJN) – which President Gustavo Petro frequently mentions as Colombia’s great enemy – have infiltrated two professional soccer teams and at least four private security companies. The document details how these “invisible drug traffickers”heirs of the former Narco Board of Directors and the emerald business, use legal activities to facilitate their illicit operations in Colombia and abroad.
An old acquaintance from the drug world appears in the report: Luis Eduardo Méndez Bustos, criminal lawyer and president of the Independiente Santa Fe club, one of the main Colombian soccer teams. According to the report, his link with the organization dates back to the 2000s, when he defended Julio Lozano Pirateque, then leader of the Drug Trafficking Board of Directors, the criminal structure from which the NJN has reemerged. From those times, the intelligence services highlight their role as “figurehead”the use of the club as a front and his time in prison in the United States for obstruction of justice in the exercise of his work as a lawyer for drug traffickers, such as Lozano Pirateque.
The relationship between the two would continue. According to the document, Lozano Pirateque “maintains ties” with Méndez Bustos. Intelligence sources consulted by EL PAÍS affirm: “These are agents who work more as legal advisors than in drug trafficking itself. Soccer has always been a key space for money laundering.”
When consulted by this newspaper, Méndez claims to be unaware that his name appears in new intelligence reports. “My relationship with anyone named in drug trafficking is strictly professional, due to advice that people who have been outside the law ask me for,” he says. He adds that “for a long time” he has not had contact with Lozano Pirateque and that the advice he has provided to drug traffickers “is not formal nor is it related to the football club.” “I don’t ask for powers to represent them legally,” he explains. “They are only advice, and I always advise them to go to court.” He also says that he has already spoken with the National Intelligence Department to clarify the accusations.
Méndez’s name has frequently appeared in files on drug traffickers. In 2013, Carlos Alberto Rincón Díaz, alias Cracklingdeclared before the Prosecutor’s Office that, while the United States was investigating Lozano Pirateque and Luis Caicedo Velandia for drug trafficking and money laundering, they met at the Santa Fe headquarters, in Bogotá. According to the witness, Méndez, then president of the team, also participated in those meetings, whom he described as “the person who fixed all their problems and participated in drug trafficking.” Joint investigations by Colombian and US authorities revealed that, since the mid-2000s, the networks of Caicedo and Lozano, key figures of the so-called Bogotá poster, They would have channeled capital from their illicit businesses to the club.
Another leader under scrutiny was Édgar Páez Cortés, also a criminal lawyer and president of the Tigres FC team, from the second division, murdered in September 2023 after leaving a match. The intelligence report outlines his alleged participation in the former Drug Trafficking Board of Directors as responsible for “operations and logistics for the transportation of drugs into the country.” This newspaper contacted his family, who declined to comment.
In the case of Páez, who had also been an investor in Santa Fe, the authorities investigated financial movements around the club he managed, as well as his possible links with networks dedicated to drug trafficking and illegal betting. Although he was not convicted, investigations linked his murder to a settling of accounts by organized crime.
A statement from the hitman who attempted his life and two other witnesses allowed the Prosecutor’s Office to open new lines of investigation. According to one of them, the murder was committed by the so-called San Andresito Office of 38, a Bogotá criminal structure associated since the 2000s with the Clan del Golfo, the largest armed group in the country, and with the drug dealers of Boyacá, who appear repeatedly in the DNI report.
Companies on the radar
Private security companies occupy a relevant section in the document. The report warns that several have been instrumentalized by the NJN to obtain legal weapons and escort certificates for drug traffickers. “Some members of the NJN would have used the private security sector to expand their operational power,” the text reads.
One of the companies mentioned is Hidra Seguridad, established in 2022 in Bogotá. The company ceased to be anonymous that same year, when it was learned that it had given some bodyguard certificates to four members of the Gulf Clan. Its legal representative is Andrés Guillermo Cadena, who through his lawyer Alberto Boek responds that the company “does not have and has not had ties with the New Drug Trafficking Board or the people mentioned.” He explains that those who obtained the certifications did so “to be heads of their own security schemes” and affirms that as soon as they became aware of their judicial records, they suspended the permits. “It is also important to clarify that the company does not issue nor is it in charge of safe-conduct permits for carrying weapons,” he points out, to argue the falsehood of the accusations of managing legal weapons to illegal groups. “The Superintendence of Surveillance opened an investigation into these events and it has already been filed,” he concludes.
In Hidra’s records, intelligence points out, there are former employees and contractors with judicial records, among them Dionisio de Jesús Vera Olmos, convicted in the United States for drug trafficking, and Jorge Luis Blanco Rodríguez, alias The Donkeyextradited for his ties to drug cartels. Connections with the emerald sector also appear, such as Edwin Bayardo Molina Castañeda, manager of Coexminas and grandson of Gilberto Molina, murdered in 1989 during the call green war.
The second company mentioned is Seguridad Oriental, near Esmeraldas Santa Rosa, directed by Hernando Sánchez and Juan Sebastián Aguilar, known as Pedro Pechugaboth murdered earlier this year in Bogotá. The report details that the company obtained public contracts with the Administrative Department of the Public Service (471 million pesos) and the Bogotá Secretariat of Education (35,000 million). Incorporated in 2000, its majority partners were Aguilar and his wife, Luz Mery Mendieta Poveda, who controlled almost 68% of the company. After Aguilar’s murder in 2025, the company is in the succession process.
Another firm under investigation is Magal Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada, created in Villavicencio (Meta) and linked, according to the report, to Jorge Iván González, alias J the Firmanother of the alleged leaders of the NJN. Also appearing is Seguridad Sara Ltda., founded in 2008 by Jenner Arturo Tapiero and Jorge Oswaldo Castaño, arrested last March for allegedly using the company as a front to arm members of criminal organizations. In 2019, its shareholder composition changed to include José Manuel Rodríguez Torres, a criminal lawyer close to Mario Uribe, former president of Congress and cousin of former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, convicted for his alliances with paramilitaries, and lawyer Diego Cadena, convicted of having tampered with witnesses in favor of Uribe Vélez.
According to the report, this company certified Oliverio Isaza, alias Terrora member of the Gulf Clan until his murder in February 2025. That certificate allowed its beneficiaries to legally carry weapons. That same month, the Prosecutor’s Office announced the extinction of the company’s ownership, when investigating whether it operated at the service of the Gulf Clan. According to the investigations, they demanded payments of between 10 and 40 million pesos from members of criminal groups to include them on their payroll and grant them escort accreditations.
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