A cartel linked to a drive-by shooting at a London memorial service for a mother and her daughter was so notorious it was featured in Netflix’s Narcos hit series.
The funeral was being held for Sara Sanchez and her mother, Fresia Calderon, whose ex was Carlos Arturo Sanchez-Coronado.
He had been the ‘money deliverer’ for a London-based gang whose members were linked to the infamous Colombian Cali Cartel.
In 2006 the mainly north London-based dealers admitted importing 150 kilos of cocaine and sending £19million back to Colombia. Investigators thought the real amounts involved were likely much higher.
Sanchez-Coronado had fled abroad when the net had closed on the UK operation in 2003.
Got him: Carlos Arturo Sanchez-Coronado had fled abroad but was hauled back to the UK
Bundles of American cash seized during the raids on the homes of the London gang in 2003, which was linked to drugs supplied from the Colombian Cali Cartel
Drugs were distributed by the cartel through Spain where they were sent to London to be sold with profits sent back to South America
Over 100 officers pounced at the homes of 17 suspects and businesses and arrested ten men and two women.
Jesus Ruiz Henao and his brother-in-law Mario Tascon posed as respectable members of the public but later admitted their role in the web of drugs.
They were jailed for 19 years and 17 years respectively in 2006 for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and money laundering offences.
Another 29 people had also been jailed for their roles in the gang.
Carlos Arturo Sanchez-Coronado (left) was the ex-husband of Fresia Calderon, who was one of the people the service was being held to remember
Police officers lead away a man arrested in Hornsey, during a series of raids in London in 2003
Packages of what is believed to be high-grade cocaine seized in London by the Met Police
But Sanchez-Coronado had escaped to Colombia and it would be March 2009 before he would face justice.
He had been discovered in the country in May 2008 working as a taxi driver.
As he battled to try and avoid extradition he claimed he used the money earned in the gang to help his sick daughter in Colombia. It is unclear to who he was referring.
He was brought back to Southwark Crown Court where he was jailed for five-and-a-half years for helping the ring launder money.
The Colombian Cali Cartel was featured heavily in Netflix’s hit Narcos series on the streamer
A total of 31 people were jailed for their roles in the London gang, linked to the Cali Cartel
The London ring was smashed in 2003 but saw Sanchez-Coronado escape to Columbia at first
On his release the crook moved back to South America, where he was believed to be living in the Chilean capital of Santiago when he died at the age of 56 last year.
But it was his links to the Colombian Cali Cartel that may have returned to haunt London’s streets.
The drugs empire was founded in 1987 by brothers Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela.
They had broken from Pablo Escobar’s operation and at the height of their powers were said to control over 90 per cent of the world’s cocaine.
A suspect in the 2003 raids is shown being led away after the police said the UK cartel had been smashed
Meanwhile Carlos Arturo Sanchez-Coronado had fled to Colombia after the London raids
DEA chief Thomas Constantine called it ‘The biggest, most powerful crime syndicate we’ve ever known’.
It was a trip by Gilberto into Spain in the mid-1980s that saw the drugs ring expand into Europe.
Through the Italian Camorra Mafia-style network, its cocaine was distributed across the continent.
Guerrilla faction FARC kidnapped Christina Santa Cruz, the daughter of Cali Cartel leader José Santacruz Londoño, in 1992.
In this file photo taken on November 7, 2002, Colombian drug kingpin Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela walks out of the Combita Boyaca maximum security prison in Tunja, Colombia, as a free man after serving seven years on a 15 year-sentence
This August 1995 file photo shows Cali, Colombia, Cartel top leader Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela after his capture
But the cartel responded to its demand for a £10million ransom by snatching 20 or more members of the Colombian Communist Party and other organisations and the sister of Pablo Catatumbo, a representative of the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordinating Board.
After talks Christina and the sister of Catatumbo were released.
The cartel operated under a cloak of fear and intimidation.
Death was threatened against those who made mistakes and junior members were murdered if they did things wrong.
The cartel was eventually brought down when Jorge Salcedo Cabrera, the operation’s head of security, turned confidential informant for the DEA.
Saturday’s shooting, which took place at around 1.30pm pm on Saturday, January 14, took place as mourners attended a service for a 20-year-old British-Colombian cancer victim and her 50-year-old mother.
Family and friends of Sara Sanchez and her mother, Fresia Calderon, were at St Aloysius Church on Phoenix Road opposite Euston Railway station for the memorial.
Ms Calderon is understood to have died from a blood clot in November following a flight from Colombia to Heathrow, before Ms Sanchez died from terminal leukaemia three weeks later.
The Metropolitan Police said it had arrested a 22-year-old man following the shooting, which left six people injured, including a seven-year-old girl who remains in a serious condition with ‘life-threatening’ injuries.
