MIAMI _ The top Colombian government official in charge of fighting corruption was arrested Tuesday in Bogota on money laundering charges filed in Miami federal court _ including allegations that he flew here to collect bribes in a shakedown of a Colombian politician who was secretly helping U.S. authorities.
Luis Gustavo Moreno Rivera, 35, the national director of anti-corruption in Colombia, and Leonardo Luis Pinilla Gomez, 31, an attorney practicing in Colombia, were charged with one count of conspiring to launder money to promote foreign bribery. The criminal complaint charging the Colombians was filed under seal on Friday.
Both Moreno and Pinilla were arrested in Colombia on a provisional arrest warrant, or Interpol Red Notice. Both now face extradition to Miami, a judicial process that normally takes months.
According to the criminal complaint, a cooperating federal source was approached by Moreno and Pinilla last November in an attempt to obtain a bribe of 100 million Colombian pesos. Moreno and Pinilla offered to give the federal source copies of sworn statements taken from Colombian witnesses who had testified against him in a corruption case back home, the complaint said.
Last week, Moreno and Pinilla traveled to Miami and met with the federal source who _ at the direction of Drug Enforcement Administration agents _ provided Moreno and Pinilla with a $10,000 deposit of the bribe money, the complaint said. Recorded conversations revealed that Moreno and Pinilla discussed the anti-corruption official's authority to control the investigation into the federal source in Colombia and that Moreno could inundate his prosecutors with work so that they would be unable to focus on the investigation.
In exchange, Moreno and Pinilla asked for a 400 million Colombian peso payment with an additional $30,000 to be paid before Moreno left Miami for Colombia, according to the complaint.
The complaint further alleges that several of the $100 bills from the $10,000 paid to Moreno and Pinilla were found on Moreno and his family as they boarded their flight back to Bogota.
According to sources familiar with the DEA investigation, the federal source who assisted U.S. authorities was Alejandro Lyons Muskus, a former Colombian provincial governor, who faces 20 counts of corruption-related charges in his homeland. Colombian prosecutors have accused Lyons of orchestrating an embezzlement scheme involving royalties _ payments made for the right to extract natural resources.
Lyons is the latest of a string of South American politicians who are accused of plundering their governments' coffers and then flee to South Florida for refuge. Since last year, the DEA has been using Lyons as a federal source, though he is not identified in the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday in Miami federal court.
