Original subtitles

(brooding music)

REPORTER 1: More violence to report tonight in Colombia.

REPORTER 2: Colombia’s crisis has escalated dramatically.

REPORTER 3: In the cocaine capital of the world.

(sirens blaring)

(automatic gunfire)

(suspenseful music)

REPORTER: Justice Minister Lara Bonilla was ambushed and murdered.

NARRATOR: On the 30th of April 1984,

Colombia's Justice Minister was shot dead in his car.

REPORTER: One of his assassins confessed

that he had been paid $21,000 by someone from Medellín.

NARRATOR: The assassination had been ordered

by the Medellín drug lord Pablo Escobar.

REPORTER: The Americans believe

Pablo Escobar was personally responsible.

MAN: When is the government going to move against these people -

people like Escobar?

REPORTER: The Colombian Airforce... (explosion)

..bombed Escobar's ranch.

(explosions)

RON: To Escobar, it didn't matter whether you were a man,

woman, or a child.

If you're going to die, you're going to die.

NARRATOR: In response, the Colombian government

declared war on all the country's cartels.

(crack of thunder)

- The Colombian government intends to pursue the Cali Cartel.

MAN: The Cali Cartel.

NARRATOR: In the chaos that followed,

one cartel leader fled to Europe.

- My father, he escaped one night.

They say that he made some business

with this Italian Mafia.

ROSS: The Cali Cartel and the Mafia?

NARRATOR: And he established a drugs pipeline

to organised crime groups in Europe.

- Oh, wow.

REPORTER: Now, the Mafia and South American traffickers

target Europe - in particular, Britain.

NARRATOR: And created a new market.

- So, I've come to Colombia, to work out the connection

between the Mafia, the United Kingdom

and the cocaine trade.

(title music)

NARRATOR: The Mafia originated in southern Italy,

and was exported to America and the rest of the world.

But what is its relationship with Britain?

To find out, I've followed a trail

which led me to an assassination in London.

- This is all adding up to an example killing.

NARRATOR: And a mafia associate hiding in the northwest of England.

NARRATOR: My journey then took me to the US, to try and unravel

the long-standing links between the Mob and British crime bosses.

- Who did he do business with? - Ronnie and Reggie.

- The Krays?

NARRATOR: I discovered how the flood of cocaine from South America

into the US, brought in new laws that wreaked havoc on the Mob...

(indistinct shouting)

- And that's when I decided to cooperate with the government.

NARRATOR: ..And ushered in a new era.

REPORTER: A group of a dozen wealthy families

who control over 80% of the world's cocaine market.

NARRATOR: The dilution of the American Mob drove

the cartels to look for new partners and new territories.

- And where else did they go?

- As far as I know, they went to Europe.

And they went to your country, the UK.

(plane jets roaring)

NARRATOR: I've come to Colombia,

to investigate how the global expansion of the cocaine cartels

impacted Britain and its relationship with the Mafia.

REPORTER: 80% of the international cocaine trade

is headquartered here.

Take away the cocaine dollar, and Colombia would crumble.

NARRATOR: I'm heading southwest, into the Cauca Valley,

to see the scale of cocaine production in the region

and the ongoing war on drugs.

I've been invited by the APOLO special operations unit

of the Colombian Army, to join them on a raid aimed at finding

and destroying cocaine labs.

- (speaking Spanish)

- (speaking Spanish) - (speaking Spanish)

- Goodnight. I am Colonel Peña,

I am commander of the APOLO operations.

The mission for tonight is very dangerous

for all people, for civilians.

NARRATOR: The cocaine processing labs we're looking for

are inside territory that's loyal to the cartels.

The local population depend on the income from cocaine,

and will be prepared to defend it.

(brooding music)

(speaking Spanish)

- (speaking Spanish)

- So, they brief the soldiers three or four minutes before they leave.

They have no idea where they're going,

and that's so nobody can inform the traffickers

that a raid is about to take place.

NARRATOR: The war on drugs in Colombia

has been raging here for over 50 years.

The country still produces more than half of the world's supply -

over 1,000 metric tonnes a year.

(eerie music)

NARRATOR: The labs are hidden within dense forest.

Once we leave the road, we must move forward on foot.

OFFICER: Please stay together. Everyone close to each other.

(unsettling music)

NARRATOR: The coca leaf is the source of the world's cocaine.

REPORTER: The process begins with a coca being finely chopped.

Ordinary household salt is sprinkled on the leaves to react

with the moisture released by the chopping.

NARRATOR: The process of turning the leaves

into an addictive white powder has remained the same for decades.

REPORTER: A black, tar-like liquid oozes from it,

as it's transferred to a barrel.

The petrol will act as a solvent, devouring the sticky black fluid.

After a thorough mixing, the barrel is covered for the night.

It'll take another seven hours for the petrol to do its job.

(suspenseful music)

- The issue we have here is that if the locals find that we're here,

what the cartel does is, it gets all the locals to surround the soldiers

and kidnap them.

So, boys, it could turn rather ugly.

NARRATOR: After climbing over 3,000 feet into the forest,

(dog barking) we're told to turn our lights off.

The soldiers think they've spotted a lab.

(dog barking, howling)

NARRATOR: We prepare to move in.

- This way.

(dog barking)

(suspenseful music)

We've found two labs.

One that's recently been dismantled,

and another one here that's presently being built.

They knew we were coming, and they've cleared it.

NARRATOR: The labs have been abandoned.

They will now be decommissioned,

but it's only a matter of time before they're rebuilt.

- So, there is, er...

There's no slowdown in the production of cocaine here.

- Have you at any point come into contact with any traffickers

that were sending cocaine to the United Kingdom?

NARRATOR: I want to discover exactly how the cartels moved

on from their relationship with the American Mafia

in the 1980s, and how they brought cocaine to Britain.

- So, organised crime groups... - Yeah, mafia groups.

At this moment, it's the big problem.

NARRATOR: I want to find out more about the expansion of the cocaine

trade into Europe and Britain.

(tense music)

So, I'm off to meet someone who has spent his whole life

close to the heart of one of the biggest cartels in the world,

and who witnessed their collaboration

with the Mafia firsthand.

- John Joseph Gotti, you know, talked to my father and...

- Head of the Gambino family?

- Yes.

They were businessmen and friends.

NARRATOR: I'm looking into Britain's complex relationship with the Mafia.

My journey has brought me to Colombia.

- The hills are full of coca.

NARRATOR: I've been told that the cartels responded

to the American Mafia being weakened in the late 1980s

by looking for partners who could import cocaine directly into Europe

and the UK.

NARRATOR: Now, I'm travelling to the capital, Bogotá, which has been

at the heart of the long and bloody war

between the government and the cartels.

(explosion) (siren wailing)

I'm meeting with US journalist and author Ron Chepesiuk.

Ron has studied Colombia's cocaine trade since the 1980s.

- Not a bad view, Ron. - Yeah, beautiful.

NARRATOR: He's tried to trace multiple cartels

and map their influence across the globe.

- In 1987, Escobar was the man,

and the Medellín Cartel were the organisation.

They always say, they were the Henry Fords, because they developed

a transportation system which mass-distributed drugs to the US.

Whereas the Cali Cartel were like McDonalds,

because they developed it into a corporate enterprise.

This is why I think they're the most important drug organisation

that ever was.

- The Cali Cartel. - The Cali Cartel.

NARRATOR: Less well known than Escobar and the Medellín Cartel,

brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez

ran a rival cocaine cartel out of the Colombian city of Cali.

- Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, who was sort of the godfather

of the Cali Cartel, became known as the 'Chess Master',

because he was able to strategically plan their operation.

They always looked for the business approach to solving a problem,

rather than a criminal approach.

They made a deal with Escobar.

Pablo would, and the Medellín Cartel would handle Miami,

and the Cali Cartel would have New York City.

NARRATOR: In the 1980s, the Cali and Medellín cartels divided up

the two most lucrative markets in the US.

Escobar supplied Miami,

and the Rodriguez Brothers supplied New York.

- New York City, Queens, has an enormous Colombian population.

- It's Italian Mafia territory as well.

- It's also Italian Mafia territory,

and they had to respect the Italian Mafia.

The Italian Mafia knew everything that was going on in the city,

so I'm sure they worked out a deal.

They were businessmen, you know what I mean?

NARRATOR: The Cali Cartel and the New York Mafia

struck an informal alliance over distribution of cocaine

throughout the East Coast.

REPORTER: The Colombians supplied the cocaine,

the Mafia in America ran the distribution network.

NARRATOR: But in the late 1980s, a US law enforcement campaign

against the American Mob

started to target the cartel members as well.

REPORTER: Police chiefs remove the Italian connection,

and now target the Colombians.

NARRATOR: It forced The Cali Cartel to adapt and look elsewhere.

- The heat was still on.

The US government was going after The Cali Cartel,

and being the shrewd businessmen that they are,

they realised this was a new opportunity

to introduce a new market.

They were shipping drugs into Europe,

every country in Latin America.

They were even talking about going into Japan.

- So, do you think the Cali Cartel - the Rodriguez Brothers -

start selling cocaine in the UK?

- Well, I think it was a natural progression.

The market itself, there was 60 million British people, right?

So, it was only natural, I think, that they saw that Great Britain

would be the market for cocaine.

I believe that they saw England as an easy target,

with lax laws.

- Do you know what route they took?

Well, no, and that's one of the best-kept secrets in the history

of the drug trade.

NARRATOR: Internationally business-minded, entrepreneurial

and structured, the Cali Cartel operated like a corporation.

This meant they were best placed to move away

from the troubled American Mafia

and open new distribution lines into territories like Europe and Britain.

REPORTER: After a massive roundup of alleged top mafia figures,

is there a power vacuum in organised crime?

NARRATOR: But how did they do it?

I've secured a meeting with someone who has intimate inside knowledge

of the Cali Cartel.

Fernando Rodriguez is the son of Gilberto Rodriguez, the man

who established the biggest drugs' cartel the world has ever seen.

We are meeting him at his father's former mansion

in the hills outside of Cali.

From here, Gilberto, known as the 'Chess Player,'

controlled his vast criminal empire.

- How are you doing? - Good to meet you.

- No worries. Thank you.

NARRATOR: The Hacienda is now in the hands of the Colombian government.

As a family member of an outlawed cartel,

Fernando needed special permission to return.

- There's stables down there as well. Are they part of the property?

- Yeah. - They would have had horses?

NARRATOR: This is the first time a film crew

have ever been allowed inside.

- Wow, what's this?

Oh, wow.

This is a tenpin bowling alley.

- The kids enjoy it more than the old guys.

- There's a bar over there. - Yeah, yeah.

The bar, the disco. That was a disco.

- How much money would it have cost to have built this?

- The money wasn't important at the time.

Just to have something like this to show their friends,

their family, that you could put a bowling alley in the mountains.

- This is just one of the many houses your father had.

Do you know how many he had?

- Probably had more than 4,000 properties.

- 4,000? - Yeah.

- Does it feel odd being back here looking at the swimming pool

where your father swam and there was so much fun and partying?

- Well, yeah.

My father passed many happy days here,

but my father died and...

..I forgive him for every bad thing he did in his life.

Hopefully, God will take him to a better place than here.

NARRATOR: Fernando's father's story is key to my journey.

- In 1989, my father decided to kill Pablo.

NARRATOR: This would allow them to seize control

of the global cocaine trade...

- And he decides to assassinate Pablo Escobar?

How does he go about it?

NARRATOR: ...And to expand into Europe.

- My father went to London.

NARRATOR: My investigation into Britain and the Mafia

has led me to Colombia.

- What a view. - Yeah.

NARRATOR: I'm in the hills outside the city of Cali,

talking with the son of one of the most powerful drug lords

the world has ever seen.

I've discovered that in the 1980s and '90s,

Cali Cartel leader Gilberto

Rodriguez shifted distribution away from the American Mafia

and the East Coast of the United States,

and expanded his cocaine enterprise into new territories.

- They were shipping drugs into Europe,

every country in Latin America.

They were even talking about going into Japan.

- So do you think the Cali Cartel starts selling cocaine in the UK?

- Well, I think it was a natural progression.

NARRATOR: So how did the so-called 'Chess Player' Gilberto

mastermind a shift into Europe,

and potentially Britain, and who did he do it with?

Fernando starts by telling me how his father

first built his smuggling route into America.

- They were making the base and making the cocaine.

- Powder. - Yeah, the powder.

And sending it to the United States, but in suitcases.

- What year was this?

- We're talking about '76/'77.

- He's getting two-to-three suitcases.

- Then he'd say: "We could send airplanes.

300, 400, 500 kilos in one airplane.'

(plane roaring)

The kilo, at one time, it was $60,000 a kilo.

Here in Colombia, you could get it for $1,700.

- $1,700 here for a kilo? - For a kilo.

And there, it's $60,000. - $60,000?

REPORTER: Money is no object.

The cartel's annual profits, between seven and ten billion dollars.

NARRATOR: In the late '70s,

a $58,000 profit was made on every kilo of cocaine

transported into America,

and Gilberto was so adept at trafficking

that the cartel became increasingly powerful and wealthy.

- Finally, those friends said:

"You just give me 50% of the profits, and I let you run.

I leave you all the salesmen that I have in New York, I leave you

all the houses I have there, I leave you something to watch his back."

Who watched his back? That was the Mob.

The Mob was there in New York.

NARRATOR: While I was in New York,

I learnt how much power the Mob had there in the 1970s.

- I mean, look, this was in the 1970s.

There was no DNA, no cameras, no informants.

We thought we had a licence to steal.

NARRATOR: So, it's no surprise to discover that the Cali Cartel

were doing business with the Five Families.

- One, my father needed protection. - Hm.

- And they need the merchandise.

They were businessmen, and friends, yeah?

Because John Joseph Gotti... - Head of the Gambino family.

- I know John Joseph, you know, talked to my father,

and they had some dinners together.

You know, no problem.

- How quickly did your father go from making thousands of dollars

to making millions and millions of dollars?

- In four years, he became a billionaire.

- Four years?

- Mm-hmm. - He became a billionaire?

- Yeah, yeah.

NARRATOR: One billion dollars in the 1980s

was the kind of huge number that would attract the attention

of the Cali Cartel's volatile ally,

Pablo Escobar.

- Pablo had a certain amount of the American market,

and your father had a certain amount.

- New York was only the merchandise for Cali,

and LA only the merchandise of Pablo Escobar and Medellín.

All the problems start, because Pablo starts sending merchandise

to New York, because New York was the city

that best pay the merchandiser. When that started happening,

my father started killing the people that Pablo sent.

(gunshots)

Pablo didn't like that.

NARRATOR: By the mid-1980s, the Cali Cartel's delicate web

of alliances was coming under increasing pressure,

and Escobar was trying to muscle in on their US territory.

Added to which, Gilberto Rodriguez's partner in New York,

John Paul Gotti, had become unpredictable.

Cocaine money and a crackdown on organised crime

were tearing the Mob apart.

- It's designed to shut up anybody who may talk.

NARRATOR: Then in 1984,

Escobar's violence reached new levels.

REPORTER: Car bomb attacks rip through Colombian cities.

A new word was added to the vocabulary: "narco-terrorism."

NARRATOR: Impossible wealthy,

and with a private army under his control,

Escobar was at war with the Colombian state.

(fire raging)

- Pablo Escobar arranges the assassination

of the Justice Minister here.

What happens after that?

- My father was very afraid of Pablo,

because Pablo was the Devil.

Pablo Escobar was thinking just to kill, to kill, you know?

That wasn't my father.

He escaped one night.

My father went to London.

NARRATOR: So with Pablo Escobar on a murderous rampage,

and the Colombian army deployed to wipe out the cartels,

Gilberto Rodriguez decides to flee to Europe.

His first hideout was Britain, but not for long.

- He didn't like the food.

He didn't like the fish and chips. - (snickers)

- So, he talked to his friend that was in Spain,

and he said: "Come to Spain.

I have everything covered here, everything good."

But they make big mistakes.

One night, they went to a restaurant.

It's very famous in Spain.

They start drinking four, five, six bottles of Dom Perignon,

the best champagne.

They were so drunk, and the bill was so big,

80 or 90 million pesetas. They pay in cash.

That was the end of them.

NARRATOR: As a fugitive, and with a reputation for shrewdness,

Gilberto's high-profile behaviour in Spain was ill-judged.

- The restaurant owner, he put a report to the police.

And the police, they start following.

In one month, they got him.

- So an expensive dinner in more than one way?

NARRATOR: Gilberto was convicted of money laundering and sent to prison.

In Madrid's Carabanchel Prison, Gilberto was locked up alongside

some of Spain's most hardened criminals.

There, they discussed expanding the Cali Cartel's cocaine operation

into Europe - a large, untapped market,

free from aggressive American law enforcement.

But before Gilberto could consider expanding,

he would need to resolve the mayhem back home.

(automatic gunfire)

REPORTER: At Medellín Airport, a gunman dressed as a soldier opened

fire at the entrance to the main lounge.

There were two men dead and 12 wounded.

NARRATOR: After two years in Spanish prison,

Gilberto Rodriguez was extradited back to Colombia.

Once released, he had a special mission in mind.

- In 1989, my father decided to kill Pablo.

- He decides to assassinate Pablo Escobar?

How does he go about it?

- My father and my uncle make a contract with mercenaries.

- Where were these mercenaries from?

- Most of them, they were British mercenaries.

NARRATOR: Ex-SAS soldier Peter McAleese was recruited

by military fixer Dave Tompkins and tasked with putting together

a team to kill the world's most infamous drug lord in his own home.

- They asked for ten million dollars.

They wanted the money before they did the assassination.

- So they were ex-British soldiers?

- Yeah, and I have the video of the mercenaries here.

I'm going to show it to you. - OK.

(explosions)

REPORTER: For 11 weeks, they train for the assassination attempt

on a mountain jungle, but the lavish country house where they did most

of their training looks more like the residence of a drug lord.

ROSS: That's here, isn't it? That bridge is still here.

REPORTER: Early on the morning of June 2nd,

the mercenaries were notified Escobar was in the lavish 700-acre

Hacienda Nápoles, and took off

with the objective of dropping explosives on Escobar's house.

- They have dynamite to throw from the helicopter.

They have a machine gun, point-50.

A 50-cal machine gun? - 50 calibres.

- Fires a round that big.

(crack of thunder)

REPORTER: But they ran into bad weather.

Helicopter 1 crashed into a mountain.

The pilot was killed.

The assassination attempt had been exposed.

- My father has to send people to rescue them,

because Pablo knew of the operation and he sent people to kill them.

- So these six English guys, what happened to them?

- No, they left already the country, immediately.

- Was your father disappointed? - Yeah, very, very, very.

- How does that war end?

- The war end when Pablo was dead.

NARRATOR: Despite the failure of the assassination plot,

Fernando's father was determined to find another way

to finish the job and remove Escobar.

- My father gave the police a machine

to triangulate the phone calls from Pablo.

That was- - So, hang on.

Your father helped the government authorities,

by giving them a triangulating machine

that could work out where he was transmitting from?

- Yes. So, he knew where he was. And they found him, easy.

REPORTER: Chaotic scenes at the funeral service

for Pablo Escobar.

The guns brandished now by the military that hunted and shot him.

REPORTER: Authorities expect other drug cartels

will simply take over Escobar's business.

The king may be dead, the cocaine trade is not.

NARRATOR: In 1993, with his rival Escobar dead,

and his American Mob partner John Gotti convicted and in prison,

it was now the perfect time for the Cali Cartel to veer away

from the US Mafia and expand into Europe.

Gilberto had all the contacts he needed

form his time in Spanish prison.

- He gave this contact to other members of the Cali Mafia.

And those people, they did some business with this Italian Mafia.

- The Cali Cartel and the Mafia? - Yeah.

When the Italian Mafia wanted merchandise,

my father gave them a special price to buy,

but they were winning money with the merchandise

that was coming to New York.

NARRATOR: So the Italian Mafia helped the Cali Cartel

expand into Europe.

The cartels and the Mafia were now just one step away from Britain.

REPORTER: Drugs will find their way onto the streets of Britain.

A tonne of high-quality South American cocaine was seized.

- It's the cocaine, I think, that we are worried about.

NARRATOR: In the next part of my journey...

- Fory? - Fory.

NARRATOR: ..An ex-cartel member reveals

their distribution network into Europe and Britain.

- Who would you meet, when you got to Europe?

NARRATOR: I'm in Colombia, investigating the links between

the drug cartels, Europe and Britain.

After the death of Pablo Escobar in December 1993,

and the weakening of the US Mafia,

the Cali Cartel was ready to make their move into Europe.

I'm about to meet a man who helped to run their export business.

ROSS: OK, well, this is the address.

I'm about to meet Fory.

This looks like our man up ahead.

Fory?

Fory? - Fory.

- Ross. - Ross.

- Let's walk, my friend.

Fory, how old were you when you joined the cartel?

And was that... (laughs) How dangerous was that at the time?

- So, did you actually meet the Rodriguez Brothers?

- When did you start exporting to Europe?

- What ports would you send the drugs to in Europe?

- Mm-hmm.

REPORTER: In Europe, another example of the new way

the large Colombian drug organisations

are now doing much of their business.

Big freighters appear to have now replaced

small planes and fast boats,

used by the cocaine cartels in the '70s and the '80s.

- Did you ever travel to Europe?

- So, you fly as a Venezuelan to Portugal?

Who would you meet when you got to Europe?

- Was he Italian?

- How much money do you think the Cali Cartel made

from transporting cocaine to Europe,

and how much do you think the organisation on the other side,

how much money do you think they made?

- Billions, yeah.

- Do you have any idea how much of the cocaine that you exported

ended up in the UK?

NARRATOR: So, with the help of the Italian Mafia,

the Cali Cartel were bringing drugs into Europe through Spain.

- Thank you very much. - (speaking Spanish)

NARRATOR: But after that, the trail to Britain runs cold.

On my way back to Central Bogotá,

I get a call from author Ron Chepesiuk.

He believes he has found someone

that knows how the cocaine cartels reached the UK.

In 2003, a Colombian migrant working as a bus driver,

and living in Hendon, North London - Jesus Ruiz-Henao -

was arrested for importing cocaine

with a street value of over one billion pounds.

He's now in a maximum security prison in Bogotá,

but Ron has made contact with him,

and he's agreed to speak over video phone.

Ron believes Henao pioneered the route of cocaine into Britain,

and is probably the most important drug dealer in British history.

- Here you go.

Jesus, Jesus? Let's go.

Nice to meet you, I'm Ross Kemp.

- So, can I ask you some questions, Jesus?

- When did you first get involved in cocaine?

- But it was very competitive?

NARRATOR: Crowded out by the big cartels in Colombia,

in the mid-'80s, Henao decided the best way to make real money

was in the burgeoning British cocaine market.

- You moved to the United Kingdom, is that correct?

- What was the first deal that you did?

- 10,000% difference?

- At what point did you decide to move it in larger amounts?

- To be clear, you didn't have the connections in the ports in the UK?

So, did you have any connections in Europe?

- And where did you meet?

- Jesus, the Italians that you met in Central London,

they were mafia, yeah?

- Amazing.

NARRATOR: Lacking the contacts to arrange

large shipments through UK ports,

Henao had reached out to the Italian Mafia groups based in London,

but Jesus and his brother-in-law were also under surveillance

by the National Crime Squad.

- The Italians were well entrenched with heroin

in England at that point, and this gave them a new opportunity.

And really enterprising criminals, they took advantage of it.

- Did you start to move it in bulk?

- You could sell one tonne... - One.

- ..in one day? Gone.

- We're estimating that over a ten-year period,

this organisation was responsible for one billion pounds' worth

of drugs coming onto the streets of London.

- You used another country? What country was it?

- Jesus? - He's gone.

NARRATOR: Although we were cut off,

Jesus Henao has given me a crucial lead.

The Italian Mafia helped bring major quantities

of Colombian cocaine into the UK,

and it was all funnelled through Spain.

- (indistinct police chatter)

NARRATOR: The next step of my journey into Britain and the Mafia

is now clear.

REPORTER: The sleepy little Spanish marina at Vigo

has now taken on a strategic significance in Europe's fight

against Colombia's drug cartel.

Smuggling has always been a way of life on these waters.

Now, it's cocaine.

NARRATOR: Next time, on the Mafia and Britain, I head to Spain

to uncover an embedded mafia network...

NARRATOR: ..working with British criminals to funnel cocaine

into the UK.

- These were the heavy mob. These were armed robbers.

Guys like the ex-train robber Charlie Wilson.

NARRATOR: ..And uncover the newly-ascended and violent wing

of the Italian Mafia in Calabria...

..that has surprising links to the UK.

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