BOGOTA, Colombia - Authorities in Italy, Spain, the United States and several South American countries arrested 76 people Wednesday as part of a major drug crackdown in which a restaurant linked to one of Colombia's most feared warlords was seized, officials said.
Salvatore Mancuso, an architect of a peace deal between right-wing paramilitaries and the government, was accused by federal prosecutors of investing in an upscale Italian eatery in the Caribbean resort town of Cartagena used by the drug ring to launder profits from cocaine shipments to Europe.
Authorities said the L'enoteca Restaurant and other assets seized Wednesday, including a nationwide chain of 58 men's clothing stores, were owned by the leaders of the criminal ring: an Italian father and son from Rome — Giorgio and Christian Sale — who lived in Colombia.
In total, police seized assets worth upward of $35 million during raids in eight Colombian cities Wednesday. Also confiscated as part of the multi-country police investigation were 220 pounds of cocaine, arms and a villa in Ardea, 25 miles south of Rome, which was being used as a drug refinery, Italian police said in a statement.
The prosecutor's office described L'enoteca's rapid expansion as "exaggerated" — it has affiliates in Bogota and the Caribbean port town of Barranquilla — and possible only with proceeds from the drug trade.
Evidence compiled as part of a three-year investigation involving some 300 police wiretaps in Italy and abroad also indicated that Mancuso was trying to buy two undeveloped properties in Spain from the Sale family, the chief federal prosecutor said.
Mancuso is wanted by a U.S. federal court on charges of being among Colombia's biggest drug traffickers. But President Alvaro Uribe has suspended his extradition order as part of a peace deal that Mancuso helped broker and which has led to the demobilization of more than 30,000 right-wing fighters.
Colombian and Italian authorities wouldn't reveal the identities of those captured, saying only that 45 were Italian and 25 were drug traffickers in the United States, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia and Spain. The remaining six were arrested in Columbia, police said.
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