U.S. drug informant goes from pinstripes to prison stripes

By Gerardo Reyes

McClatchy Newspapers

5:26 PM CDT, March 23, 2008

PANAMA CITY, Panama — The man who helped the United States strike the hardest blow ever against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia expected to live a nice, quiet life on a cozy little island off the coast of Panama. Instead, he got a jail cell.

Convicted Colombian drug-trafficker Nelson Urrego was the key informant for a U.S. covert operation that ended in 2003 when the leadership of the FARC — Colombia's oldest and best financed leftist guerrilla organization — was finally indicted on drug-trafficking and murder charges.

Urrego's job was to hand the rebels several satellite phones that had been tapped by U.S. federal agents. He delivered, thanks to a friendship he had struck with a guerrilla leader in a Bogota jail. The feds started listening to the rebels' conversations and built a case against them.

Urrego thought he had bought himself a new life. He settled in Panama, where he purchased Chapero Island for $1.5 million.

He was treated as an important investor by the government and the business community. His companies were awarded both government and private-sector contracts. He became a Panamanian citizen, handled several sizable bank accounts and frequently traveled to Miami, Madrid and Beijing. He was even often seen in the company of DEA agent Art Ventura, the agency director in Panama.

Then Urrego rented out Chapero Island for CBS' "Survivor" TV series.

That's how the island became famous and coveted, and brought its owner down, Urrego told El Nuevo Herald in an interview from his prison cell.

On Sept. 15, Panamanian authorities landed on Chapero, confiscated it and arrested Urrego and his 19-year old girlfriend on money-laundering charges.

"I wanted to live a lawful life in this country, I wasn't doing anything illegal," Urrego says.

He claims that the charges leveled against him are a sham intended to strip him of his island after he refused to sell it. Several lawyers are working on obtaining his freedom and recovering his island, purchased in 2002, after he was released from a prison in Colombia, he said.

"I had the bad luck politicians and impresarios of this country liked my island," Urrego said. "A prosecutor has all the right and duty to investigate a person, but the investigation must be based on an objective and scientific analysis, not on a bunch of rumors to try to take away an island."

Considered a mid-level drug trafficker, Urrego served a sentence in Colombia for deriving income from dealing narcotics.

He claims that the money he used to purchase the island comes from the legal sale of some farms in Colombia and not from drug trafficking.

Urrego says the natural beauty of Chapero Island and the fame it got after being featured on "Survivor" attracted investors that made several offers to purchase it.

One of the interested investors was prominent Panamanian developer, Mayo Alfredo Aleman, who confirmed this during an interview with El Nuevo Herald.

Aleman says Urrego was not considered a suspicious person when they first met in 2005. He even came to their first meeting with DEA agent Ventura, Aleman says.

Panamanian justice has a different view.

Panamanian Prosecutor Jose Abel Almengor said in an interview with El Nuevo Herald that Urrego introduced $12 million in drug-money to Panama through bank transfers and human couriers. The investigation, he said, started in 2005, after Panamanian Banco Continental reported suspicious activities in Urrego's accounts.

Urrego's accounts had been open since 2002, when he had already been sentenced in Colombia and had pending charges in Florida. The bank, however, never objected to doing business with him, Urrego says.

What's more, the government also seemed to trust Urrego. One of his companies got a contract from the Panama Canal Authority to install the sound system in a museum dedicated to the Panama Canal.

Urrego says that before he was arrested, Panama's vice president, Samuel Lewis Navarro, made him an offer for the island. Urrego says Lewis spoke to him twice about the possibility of purchasing the island, once in Panama and once in Miami. However, Aleman and Ventura, both of whom were also at the Panama meeting, told El Nuevo Herald that Lewis did not attend that meeting.

Urrego's lawyer, Victor Almengor (no relation to the prosecutor), says Lewis will have to explain his interest in doing business with an individual that his government is investigating for money-laundering. Lewis did not answer El Nuevo Herald's calls to his personal phone number, or his public relations office.