Fugitive Financier Vesco Awaits Extradition In Cuba Nixon-Era Figure Wanted On Drug And Embezzlement Charges

Robert Vesco, the longtime fugitive financier implicated in Nixon-era financial scandals and Colombian cartel drug smuggling in the ‘80s, has been arrested in Cuba, where he has been hiding for 13 years. He may be sent back to the United States to stand trial, Justice Department sources told The Herald Thursday night.

Those sources said Vesco, who lived in grandeur a mile away from President Fidel Castro, was in Cuban government custody as negotiations continue with Clinton administration officials on a possible U.S. arrest warrant for the ex-financier.

If the negotiations succeed, the sources say, Vesco would be flown directly to Jacksonville, Fla., where he has been under indictment since 1989 for cocaine smuggling in collaboration with convicted Medellin Cartel chieftain Carlos Lehder Rivas.

The extradition of Vesco has been mentioned many times as one of the requisites for the improving of relations between the United States and Cuba. Though the two countries have engaged in secret negotiations recently over the repatriation of Cuban rafters, two administration officials denied Thursday night that Washington made a secret deal with Havana that led to Vesco’s arrest.

American officials said they suspected Vesco was arrested partly to cultivate goodwill with the United States as Havana seeks to improve ties and persuade the Clinton administration to ease the economic embargo.

Vesco is one of the most notorious and elusive fugitives of his time. He stands accused of stealing $224 million from his mutual fund firm, then of trying to get Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Commerce Secretary Maurice H. Stans to fix the case by funneling an illegal $200,000 contribution to President Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign.

He spent a decade running between Caribbean Basin countries that gave him temporary asylum: first the Bahamas, then Costa Rica from 1974 to 1978, Antigua, the Bahamas again in the early ‘80s, and Cuba since 1982.

Accusations of new criminal activities followed him almost everywhere he went. He was accused of bribing public officials in the Bahamas and later of drug smuggling in cooperation with Cuban government officials.

In 1980, U.S. congressional investigators accused him of trying to bribe U.S. officials to release military and civilian aircraft to Libya.

In 1981, Justice Department officials called for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Vesco was seeking to bribe Carter administration officials to resolve his legal problems.

In 1983, a federal prosecutor in Brownsville, Texas, linked Vesco to a conspiracy to smuggle American technology into Cuba.

The current charges Vesco now faces in Jacksonville date back to alleged drug transactions in 1984. The indictment charges that Lehder, the Medellin Cartel boss, contacted Vesco to win Cuban permission to fly 1,575 pounds of cocaine through Cuban airspace to the Bahamas, and then on the United States.

Administration sources said Thursday night that Vesco might yet escape their grasp despite that long list of allegations.

They expressed skepticism that a deal could be worked out with Havana to extradite Vesco to the United States. The sources expressed two potential concerns: That the Castro government would demand too much in return; and that the outcry would be too great among Cuban exiles who fear a U.S. rapprochement with Castro.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials in the United States were scrambling to ready his passage to the United States. Federal marshals in Florida were on standby awaiting word from the Justice and State departments that the operation to extract Vesco from Cuba is “a go,” a federal source told The Herald.

“The Cubans have already arrested him and they’re going to throw him out,” the source said. “The marshals are going to get him and bring him back. He’s going to be brought over here to Jacksonville.”

If he does come to Florida, Vesco will face what is known as the “son of Lehder” indictment. The 1989 case grew out of the arrest and conviction of Lehder, the only cartel boss ever convicted by a U.S. jury.

Vesco allegedly helped to set up Lehder in the cocaine transport business on Norman’s Cay in the Bahamas. Lehder arrived in the Bahamas in the late 1970s and bragged to associates that he had become close friends with Vesco. Lehder allegedly said that Vesco introduced him to Castro and taught him the intricacies of money laundering.

Lehder was driven out of the Bahamas in the early 1980s when his cocaine-laden planes and armada of bodyguards drew too much attention. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in Jacksonville in 1981 and convicted seven years later. He is serving a life sentence in a federal prison.

Vesco himself took refuge in Cuba after wearing out his welcome in the Bahamas. He was said to have a $1.3 million yacht, two planes and various residences in Cuba.

Cuban officials have in the past explained that Vesco was admitted mainly because, in supporting his wife and two daughters, he was pumping a great deal of money into the Cuban economy.

But Vesco was known to have fallen on hard financial times as his money ran down and Cuba’s economy crumbled.

As Cuba began its own crackdown on drug smuggling within government circles in the late 1980s, Vesco became an increasing embarrassment.