Princely Trafficking (Saudi drug smuggling)

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a wealthy Saudi Arabian Prince if you could see how these people live you would be astounded charged with executing one of history's most remarkable drug deals the very fact that he was a Saudi royal authorities could not touch it two witnesses with questionable motives and this is where our justice system grossly loses its sense of balance and a woman caught in the middle very finally you will never imagine her of course anything like that could a Saudi prince be the newest player in the international drug scene a squad of narcotics police moved quietly through the halls of a nondescript house in huazhi lesyk a grey industrial suburb just six miles from the center of Paris at the arranged time the police forced their way in they found almost a ton of cocaine it was the largest shipment of the drug ever seized on French soil according to one of the safe house guards the cocaine had arrived in France two weeks earlier on a flight from Saudi Arabia the plane was a royal airliner a 727 chartered by a Saudi Arabian Prince his name knife bin Sultan bin Fawaz al Shara Prince Nayef is a person of I would say first magnitude intelligence he's a deeply religious man he reads copious one he stays on top of current events he's a highly complex person but was he a drug dealer the information put the French police in a difficult position a shipment of cocaine this large demanded investigation could a Saudi prince really be responsible for such a bold crime the Saudi royal family has ancient roots but very modern wealth and power Saudi Arabia was you was founded in the early 20th century by King Abdulaziz with the support of the British Empire to carve out the Arab countries are out of the Ottoman Empire the discovery of oil under the desert made Abdul Aziz a major international player and enormous ly rich and now it is the one of the largest country in the Middle East with the largest amount of oil in the globe and with substantial influence politically culturally and and religiously the king took more than a dozen wives and fathered more than 40 sons knives Shaolin he is married to the daughter of the son of King Abdulaziz the founder he is a prince not because he was born one he is a prince out of marriage the bigger the larger Al Saud tribe it is an excess of thirty thousand people and every one of them is born with a golden spoon or several golden spoons his mouth Saudi princes are famous for the opulence of their lifestyle palatial homes private jets sprawling holiday homes and extravagant shopping sprees and even though Prince Nayef is far from the throne his way of living is just as privileged somebody like Navy Shaolin you're talking about tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars so the amount is beyond belief was it possible but protected by this cloak of wealth and power a Saudi royal had begun babbling in the International drugs trade a possible answer to that question would begin to emerge four months later and four thousand miles away in the United States in October 1999 the US Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA was concluding a major investigation called Operation Millennium with the cooperation of the Colombian government the US was arresting dozens of top ranking drug traffickers helping the DEA was an unusual go between a charming and persuasive man of mystery called baroque Vega meru Vega was an intermediary between the US Justice Department and Colombian drug traffickers and to drug traffickers the Baroque Vega knew were Carlos Rahman and Juan Gabrielle who suger once again Ramon would possibly turn the most successful drug traffickers ever to come out of Colombia each man was blind in one eye which was how they got their nickname the Cyclops brothers Ruth Vega who arranged for cars from one one Gabrielle suka to come to the United States and enter into their plea bargains with the Justice Department the Cyclops brothers were ready to divulge their supposed drug-dealing secrets in return for reduced sentences and there was one deal in particular that Carlos Ramon wanted to talk about a drug smuggling job in 1999 he says I was a direct participant is a drug exportation he says I was dealing directly with an Arab Prince when the merchandise arrived to Paris part of the merchandise was seized in France for the DEA agents there was a simple way to check this extraordinary tale by talking to their counterparts in the French government the story appeared to be true the French authorities confirmed a drugs bust in a Paris suburb where almost a ton of cocaine had been seized in the United States investigators believed that they could now trace the journey of a major shipment of drugs from Bogota to the outskirts of Paris and the man behind the deal Prince Nayef aljalja why on earth would a Saudi prince be involved in in something like this the idea of cocaine trafficking is for people to get rich quick Saudi princes obviously don't need to get rich quick and they have more money than drug traffickers not only that the drug smuggling is punishable by death under Saudi law it was hard to imagine that for a Saudi prince the reward was worth the risk people do these things for different reasons he seemed someone who just didn't fit into the traditional perspective of Miami's drug trafficking environment as the investigators put together the princes profile they found a surprising connection that might explain the princes involvement it was an American connection for over two decades the married Prince Nayef al Shaolin had maintained an intimate relationship with an old flame from his student days in Florida an old flame who had ties to Colombia and the Cyclops brothers and so you began to see how it was more plausible historically how he could have known her and then maintain a relationship with her over the years and then ultimately had reconnected with her her name was Doris Manjari and she lived outside Miami the Drug Enforcement Administration had a new target apart from the mysterious prince his lover by April 2008 sat the US Drug Enforcement Administration believed that they were hot on the trail of a highly unusual drug trafficker prints knife al Shalem a member of the Saudi royal family connecting him to the crime were a pair of Colombian drug runners who had turned themselves in to the authorities the Cyclops brothers one who suger and Carlos Ramon they were looking to work off a long sentence and a separate drug conspiracy drug trafficking indictment unrelated to this the tales spun by the Colombians for the DEA was an extraordinary one they claimed that the whole deal we're two tons of cocaine was smuggled into France was masterminded by a mild-mannered Miami estate agent called Doris Manjari but the idea of man Jerry engineering an international drug deal seemed incredible well Doris man Jerry was a complete nobody when this case began she was a Colombian born Miami resident US citizen and a local realtor very polite extremely well-educated in person a very fine made me absolutely you will never imagine her of course anything like that she's a dedicated mother she's an accomplished businesswoman very gentle woman and she doesn't have a dishonest bone in her body and yet the Colombians maintained the Doris was the linchpin of the drug shipment as man Gerry's role in this whole thing on what seems almost as fantastical as as Prince naives role in this whole thing but then once you started to see how they had a history together it didn't shock you as much Naiya valhallen had gone to Florida in order to study at the University of Miami he soon met doris man Jerry a single mother with two children the two began a relationship during those early years while nayeth apparently was falling for mismo Jerry was also falling for the two kids he would take them everywhere he would take them to the beach he would take the boating he doted upon him the Prince bought man Jerry an apartment and a car he took her to Switzerland and showed her a bank account with her name on it anytime you need money he said just get it here was his MO Jerry in love with naive I have absolutely no doubt about it none whatsoever but the charmed Florida life they shared did not last in 1984 Prince Nayef al Shaolin left the United States as far as the investigators could tell he never set foot on American soil again doris man jerry moved on with her life and yet through thick and thin man jerry's connection to the prince remained unbroken for him to allegedly maintain this relationship for twenty years and apparently stay loyal this wasn't obviously some casual fling by 1998 Darusman Jerry was twice divorced with four children she had settled into the comfortable world of Miami's upper-middle class she was living in what was described as a million-dollar house and in Coral Gables which is a very old fashionable suburb of of Miami and she was living a very good life maybe it lacked a certain excitement I don't know whatever Doris's reasons the Colombians alleged that she made overtures to them about a possible drug deal the Colombian said the Doris contacted them through a go-between an old friend from her years in Colombia called Yvonne Lopez Yvonne Lopez and Doris McGarry knew each other going back into the 70s Lopez knew Lucilla and it was through Lopez that man Gerry came to know Lou sugah and then ultimately Ramone man Jerry hinted that she could introduce them to a major international investor a Saudi Arabian Prince they knew that man Jerry was involved with somebody who was a part of the innermost circle of the Saudi royal family she didn't wear it on her sleeve but she made it known so miss man Jerry made the arrangements for Azuga to meet Prince Nayef with whom she'd been romantically linked for years Masuka and Ramon said that they had jumped at the opportunity a meeting was planned and there were different plots they were considering but the one that they eventually adopted was to move the cocaine on the plane that belonged to Prince Nayef or at least that's what the Colombians claimed they said that in September 1998 they met Prince Nayef al Shaolin for the first time they went to Spain's glamorous playground for the rich Marbella on the Costa del Sol the initial meeting in Marbella is where they had talked in in theory if you like about the possibility of doing some business according to the Colombians the meeting went so well that the group decided to work together a plan was soon formulated and they hatched this idea of using the princes 727 jet airplane to move cocaine from Colombia through Caracas to Saudi Arabia and then to Paris for the purpose of distributing a couple of tons of cocaine in Europe and that's how this whole thing began in December 1998 Prince Nayef invited the group to Saudi Arabia for a meeting in the desert and to allegedly discuss the details of the drug deal while supposedly the trip out to the desert was key the meeting conjured up a scene from the Arabian Nights complete with air-conditioned Bedouin tents extravagance and luxury the meeting in the desert was allegedly where everything if you like came together that they would do this shipment of two tons of cocaine from Colombia via Venezuela using the princes jet the princes access to a chartered plane was key to the whole operation there was no way anybody could have ever searched that plane to find that cocaine because he was off limits and so it was like the perfect smuggling device you know to move the cocaine from Colombia to Saudi Arabia he thought because of his status as a prince that would allow him to do whatever he wants and his plane would not be searched and they will never find the drugs as a test run the group allegedly decided to fly to metric tons of cocaine 4,400 pounds on the princes plane the Colombians could sell a load that size for 36 million dollars the princes share could be as much as fifteen million in fact this was going to be the first of many loads of cocaine using the princes royal jet shipping the drugs to the Middle East and eventually into Europe it was an around-the-world operation from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to France over 10,000 miles in total in May 1999 the Colombians put their plan into action step one Prince Nayef flew on his private plane to Venezuela where he attended an oil conference a seemingly perfect alibi the next step was to get the cocaine across the border from Colombia in to Venezuela and onto the princes plane you know US authorities were cracking down so hard on Colombians moving their shipments out of Colombia to Venezuela two destinations north so Juan suger came up with a plan he found a company that shipped truckloads of Colombian potatoes into Venezuela and he arranged a slight adjustment to one of their loads and they were able to come up flash the 2,000 kilograms of cocaine under the potatoes since there are hundreds and hundreds of trucks going through the border every day obviously no one is going to pay attention to another load of potay especially potatoes according to the Colombians the truck crossed the border into Venezuela without incident and made its way to a warehouse outside Caracas there the cocaine was unloaded packed into suitcases and reloaded onto a second truck supplied by the prints with that a small truck they follow a parade of cars to the plane that we're waiting at the ramp at the mikeetty reporting Caracas the alleged drug filled suitcases were then loaded onto the princes plane and you know the plane supposedly had been upgraded tremendously there was a space where you could place the cocaine on the 30th of May the prince himself boarded the plane and the jet allegedly with the drugs on board flew back to Saudi Arabia two days later the plane left Saudi Arabia and on the 16th of May it landed at Laboure Airport outside Paris the prince disembarked with a large group of his family and went for a visit to Euro Disney according to Rahman the drug Laden luggage was not searched or even examined by customs agents in Venezuela or France the very fact that he was a Saudi royal family member authorities could not touch him coming in and out of airports nor could they search his plane then the story goes accomplices moved the suitcases to the safe house in the Paris suburb of New Zeeland how could he get away with it he could get away with it very easily because he had diplomatic immunity and that's how Neff was able to use his status as a member of the royal family in Saudi Arabia to fly his plane from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Europe and move contraband or cocaine in this instance on the plane two weeks later the French police received a tip off and they raided the safe house swept up in the initial raid was the chemist hired by the drug traffickers to weigh and measure the cocaine he knew just enough about the shipment to tell the police that there was a Saudi connection but by the time the French had identified the plane it was too late so the plane if you like it had had come and gone the French still hope to locate and interview the passengers of the princes plane they knew the plane was flying to Saudi Arabia but the Saudi government was less than helpful the reaction of the Saudi government to Prisoner of Chillon cocaine smuggling was how can we protect him and that's what they did meanwhile back in the United States Dorris man Jerry and her friend Yvonne Lopez had no idea that Rahman and Asuka were incriminating them to the Drug Enforcement Administration this is where perhaps then Jerry and even Prince Nayef and mr. Lopez are so naive because anytime you do deals with Colombian drug traffickers you should be ashamed of yourself not because you're breaking the law but because you're so stupid you never ever want to do deals with these guys they will double-cross you and that's exactly what Ramon under sugah did double-cross their partners and pin the alleged scheme onto Doris even Lopez and Prince Nayef the DEA wanted to speak to the Prince about the Cyclops brothers story but he was in Saudi Arabia any attempts to find and question him led nowhere so with the Prince out of reach the DEA decided that it was time to close the operation down they would arrest those suspects that were within their grasp even lopez and doris Manjari on a summer morning Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA agents in Assault gear surrounded a pleasant a fluent house in Coral Gables Florida the agents were certain that the owner of the house Storace man Jerry was a pivotal player in a drug smuggling operation that had landed the biggest ever shipment of cocaine on French soil her collaborator they believed was Prince Nayef al Shaolin a member of the Saudi royal family the prince himself was safe in Saudi Arabia so the agents would have to settle for Doris the DEA execution of the search and arrest warrant on his mcGarry's house is the kind of stuff of which cop TV shows are made his McGarry was starting her morning one of the agents made what is called a finger call to her house just to make sure that she was home man Jerry picked up the phone the caller hung up the assault team moved closer and closer moment after that a gang of DEA agents went through the door it was horosho the DEA arrested man Jerry with man Jerian custody agents quickly turned their attention to a search of her house at first they found nothing but then in her bedroom they discovered a safe inside the agents found exactly what they were looking for a cache of Doris's numerous passports and a stack of secret photographs from the meeting in the Saudi Arabian desert fairly astonishing photographs pictures of this Princeton in flowing robes in the desert surrounded by these these other characters in the story the the Colombian drug traffickers and Doris as well the photographs were a crucial discovery proof that a suger and Ramon's story was at least partially true Dorris and the prince had met with them in the desert of Saudi Arabia and the passports reinforced the da's theory the Duras man Jerry was a woman with plenty to hide anyone who carries a Colombian passport suffers this unfortunate fate of automatically being the subject of suspicion it's sort of the sort of thing that you can just imagine prosecutors seizing upon and that's just what they did with Doris in custody the DEA tried to get a confession after his man Jerry was arrested a brief effort to interrogate her was made by one of the agents who were there but she declined to talk to anybody apart from protestations of innocence instead man Jerry asked the prominent Miami criminal lawyer Douglas Williams to take her case my name was given to her family I was asked to come see her Williams visited Manjari in a Miami prison where she was being held without bail when I first met his McGarry in the Federal Detention Center in Miami government was saying that no matter what kind of bond she might be able to pose chin flee and seek safe haven with the Saudis and therefore was a risk of flight she and by the way had no idea of the scope of all of this I mean it was kind of like a poison mushroom that continued to grow and grow and grow and grow and growth but the more Williams learnt about the case the DEA was building against mungeri the more one thing became clear doris man jerry was about to take the rap for one of the largest ever international drug deals but what about her alleged co-conspirator Prince Nayef al Shalem on the same day that the DEA raided Doris's house the US Justice Department arrested her friend Yvonne Lopez and it also formally indicted Prince Nayef al shala but he was safe at home in Riyadh and that's where he would stay because Saudi Arabia has no extradition treaty with the US and instead of coming to his ex-lovers rescue Prince Nayef worked on damage limitation for himself he gave an interview in a family-run newspaper and denied all the allegations against him he even had an explanation for the evidence against him according to naieve he wasn't investing with the sukkah and rahman instead they were trying to invest with him in a legitimate Saudi business one of the several tasks that from time to time had been given tonight was to attract foreign which is to say non Saudi capital into investments in Saudi Arabia at the time the Saudi government was in the process of designing and constructing a very complex design and fabrication process for the production of plastic bottles full of spring water according to knife he was considering allowing Asuka and Rahman to invest in a water bottle Factory drugs had nothing to do with it at one point I have mentioned in passing to mungeri the fact that he was in the hunt for foreign investors my Jerry mentioned it to Lopez Lopez apparently mentioned it to Missoula sugah expressed a desire to get involved as an investor in this Saudi petrochemical project knifes alibi was nearly flawless he admitted to the undeniable facts the meetings with known drug dealers in Spain and in the desert but he gave those facts an innocent and plausible explanation and he said that when he got the first whiff that the Colombians were shady characters he was the one who pulled out of the deal with the prints far out of reach the prosecutors in Miami continued to build a case around the only people in custody doris man Jerry and her friend Yvonne Lopez in March 2005 the federal government put the pair on trial the court case promised to provide a great story with attention-grabbing characters anytime a Saudi prince gets indicted then you know that's obviously kind of a quote-unquote sexy story the star witnesses would be the Cyclops brothers Cointreau suger and catalyst Ramon but would it be enough to get a conviction or would the jury decide that it was the Cyclops brothers that had been lying in March 2005 a remarkable trial began at the federal courthouse in Miami the case was built around an extraordinary allegation that a Saudi Arabian Prince conspiring with two Colombian drug traffickers had used his own chartered airplane to fly two tons of cocaine from Venezuela to Paris it was extraordinary for us to see a court case that named a Saudi prince a member of the Saudi royal family supposedly involved in cocaine trafficking but the prince himself would not be standing trial nor with the two drug smugglers instead doris Manjari and even lopez was sitting at the defendants table when the case actually went to trial what we were looking at in court were the two least interesting people and this was a bit of a show trial I say show because it had this aspect of being a case where the two defendants never actually produced the cocaine or received the cocaine or distributed the cocaine so the US government and prosecutor's office here we're kind of pushing their luck to strengthen this tenuous connection between the defendants and the crime itself the government had charged them with conspiracy to possess narcotics with intent to distribute all you have to prove is that she met with some of the active participants in the cocaine smuggling operation or made a phone call to one of the participants it didn't matter that it didn't come into the United States they carried out the whole thing from US soil that is Miami and this was what the prosecution set about doing their main source of information was the Cyclops brothers Carlos Ramon and one Gribble's again both testified in court and so they gave their account of what happened they retold their thrilling international tale starting with the truckload of potatoes in Colombia and finishing with the raid on the French safe house and they insisted that Doris mungeri was the person who had put the whole plan in motion it was a gripping story and it had to be because it was more or less the prosecution's whole case there was no eyewitness testimony no forensic testimony no evidence as to how the cocaine got into the alleged possession of al-salam there were no witnesses in court to explain their role in how the potato's shipment ended up on Alan's plane that was all hearsay that meant that the government's case rested almost entirely on the shoulders of two admitted drug traffickers doctors Williams naturally figured that if he was able to put a doubt in the mind of the jury about who these characters were he could seriously undermine the government's case so man Jerry's lawyer Douglas Williams reminded the jury that asuka and Ramon were drug dealers testifying against doris man Gerry in return for lighter prison sentences they will say anything in order to reduce their own criminal exposure satisfy their prosecutorial and agent handlers and do whatever they have to do oh they'll eat their children live if they have to in order to avoid that kind of thing people like Azuga and Ramon don't care about anybody but themselves but perhaps Williams's best defense was Doris herself I remember she looked very sort of rather defenseless long flowing hair in a very straightforward trouser suit and not your typical looking drug trafficker Doris began by describing her 20-year relationship with Prince Nayef then she insisted that her friend Yvonne Lopez was the one who set up the meetings between nayeth and the drug smugglers the meetings occurred there's no question about it the question is did they talk about a drug trafficking deal and I know the defense lawyers say they didn't Douglas Williams told the jury that the prince was looking for investors in a water bottle factory not a drug scheme and Williams had a clear defense for the so called incriminating desert photographs seized during the raid on Doris's home I suppose did that was because she didn't want perspective boyfriends finding photographs of Saudi princes lying around her house and and wondering who the hell's that understandable perhaps but when the prosecution got their chance they unleashed some powerful information they reminded the jury that the Prince had actually left the u.s. in 1984 and never returned the reason he was a fugitive from the law even then he had in fact being named in an indictment in Mississippi in the mid-1980s and it was a drug indictment involving a small plane that flew from Florida to Mississippi with drugs aboard but one of the only records found from the 1984 case was a copy of an indictment charging Prince Nayef the detailed reports had disappeared from the state files in Mississippi I know the defense lawyers tried to find out more about it and they ran into the same problem we did there was no evidence this murky hint of a drug-related past seemed to give substance to the government's portrait of an unscrupulous royal who believed that he was above the law jurors are not dumb they draw inferences and narrative and there are either plausibility x' or implausible ease and you can tell circumstantially that a lot of these dots connect after deliberating for eight hours the jury returned its verdict guilty Dorris man Jerry was devastated to say that I was surprised and rocked back on my heels by it as she would be an understatement neither of us expected in July the judge sentenced doris man jerry to 24 years in prison for her role in the conspiracy even Lopez her friend and co-defendant got 23 years their fellow conspirators cuantos auger and Carlos Ramon had secured extraordinarily light sentences in exchange for their testimony the federal authorities / the Cyclops brothers prison towns Ramon who procured the cocaine served less than three years Azuga who masterminded the plan served less than two doris mungeri on the other hand wound up sitting in jail for conduct that wasn't criminal and this is where our justice system sometimes loses grossly loses its sense of balance in 2007 the French government finally put Prince Nayef al Xiaolin on trial in a courtroom north of Paris I don't know who if it all was representing naive in the French machine the Prince did not attend through his lawyers he explained that he had to remain in Saudi Arabia for what he called vital professional reasons his caution proved to be well-founded in spite of his absence the court found the Prince guilty and the judge gave him a sentence of 10 years Prince Nayef has not returned to France to serve his sentence the prince is a fugitive from justice in a case where you have a fugitive from justice it doesn't matter who you are whether you're you know a man on the street charged in a crime or whether you're the Peraino Prince and a royal family in Saudi Arabia if you evade justice and you run from justice you will be charged with evading your crime and a crime here is of course drug conspiracy the prince was safe in Saudi Arabia and that's where he would remain out of reach of the law but Fedora's man Jerry and even Lopez it was too late in the end that the two people who were bit players in this whole thing this man Jerry and mr. Lopez they end up almost getting 24 25 years in prison is if they had been bringing tons of cocaine into the United States for years and years and years but in 2007 critics claimed that this sense of imbalance was restored when a federal appeals court threw out doris man jerry's conviction even lopez was also cleared I got to tell you you don't see this sort of thing happen very often at all especially in drug trafficking cases you rarely see convictions overturn the ruling of the appeals court was short and clear whatever happened on the princes plane man Gerry and Lopez were not criminally accountable for it their phone calls meetings and photographs no matter how suspicious did not add up to what the law called conspiracy the problem isn't the facts of the case the problem is the law the law didn't fit the misconduct in the US Attorney's Office made that calculated judgment going in and it bit him in the butt at the end the court said we're ordering the district judge to dismiss the indictment now case over on the 16th of August 2007 after five years behind bars Doris Manjari was set free the federal government did not appeal the ruling although they can't meet on American soil the prince and doris Manjari are probably still in touch after more than five years four countries three Colombians two lovers and one international drugs bust questions still remain did a wealthy and religiously devout prince dabble in drug smuggling and if so why US officials have wondered whether perhaps the prince was trying to raise untraceable money for an illicit purpose like funding terrorism against Western targets using drug proceeds to finance terrorist activity is very common in the modern era it's been going on for decades and decades and decades whether the prince was involved in that kind of activity it's anyone's guess it's a dramatic theory and many are not convinced by it it just doesn't wash it doesn't make it for a variety reasons they weren't any American they weren't any Western but there's another theory to justify the princes involvement greed a prince with 50 million dollar asset he looks at the other purse with 200 million dollar asset and he says well I should get more and how do you get more let's control the drug smuggling business Prince Nayef al Shaolin continues to deny all the charges against him for the government's that wanted to put him behind bars the prince has proved to be too elusive a target for now there will always be that warrant as a fugitive and there will always be that indictment hanging over him and if he decides to go to Europe or come back in the United States and get stopped he without questioning will be brought to South Florida to Miami and he will be tried on these charges

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Channel: theDossier

Views: 1,665,509

Rating: 4.303925 out of 5

Keywords: Saudi, Arabia, Royal Family, documentary, Nayef Al-Shaalan, cocaine, smuggling, Paris, 1999, diplomat, private jet, Abdulaziz, black operation, CIA, absentia, drug, trafficking

Id: xyHcPzr5aiA

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 46min 9sec (2769 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 06 2012

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