“This is the most important operation in history against drug trafficking”, celebrated Duque, surrounded by the heads of the security and armed forces and some of their officials, according to the transmission made from their social networks.
Shortly before, the commander of the Armed Forces, General Luis Fernando Navarro, had told in the same act that they had been chasing alias Otoniel for seven years and that it took them years to understand and know the entire national and international operation of the drug lord and the Gulf Clan, and that the military-police operation was planned exactly eight days ago, with assistance from the United States and the United Kingdom.
According to the newspaper El Espectador, Úsuga, born in Turbo, Antioquia, knew the world of armed violence in all its facets: he was a guerrilla, paramilitary and head of the criminal organization with the greatest presence in Colombia.
Alias Otoniel began his path as a member of the former guerrilla of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Marxist-Leninist group that massively demobilized in 1991 and whose dissent still operates in the Norte de Santander department.
During that same year, when he was 19 years old, Úsuga demobilized from the EPL, to later join the ranks of the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), a paramilitary group.
Some time later, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the largest and most lethal paramilitary bloc the country has ever known, absorbed the ACCU and the young man joined their ranks and soon became involved in the business of extortion and money laundering.
In 2005, Úsuga demobilized, again, in the process negotiated by the then president Alvaro Uribe with the AUC. He surrendered his weapon and even signed a letter addressed to the High Commissioner for Peace, in which he stated that he was willing to apply for the benefits offered by the Justice and Peace Law, to receive maximum sentences of eight years in prison.
However, the following year, already 34 years old, he decided that he did not want to continue in the process of demobilization of the paramilitaries – which included confessing their crimes and handing over the appropriate assets by force – and co-founded an armed group known as The Urabeños, which settled on the Caribbean Coast, the Pacific Coast and the Andean region of Colombia.
Among his main objectives was to regain control of the illegal business he had cultivated with the AUC.
His main partner was arrested in 2009 and 10 years later extradited to the United States to serve a drug trafficking sentence. Over time and with the death or arrest of his allies, alias Otoniel was gaining power and prominence until in 2012 he became the only leader of what by then was already known as the Clan del Golfo or the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.
Since then, alias Otoniel has accumulated more than a hundred judicial processes in the Colombian Justice and Interpol was looking for him with a red circular.
According to the Colombian Government, the Clan del Golfo is responsible for sending tons of cocaine to the United States, as well as setting up a criminal network dedicated to collecting extortions from businessmen and merchants in the Urabá region, on the border with Panama, and on the Costa Atlantic mainly.
He is also accused of murdering numerous police officers and social leaders as part of his terror strategy in the areas where his armed group operates.
Its main source of financing comes from drug trafficking, a network in which it works jointly with the Sinaloa Cartel and its rival, the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel. Additionally, it receives millionaire income from illegal mining and extortion.
In October 2018, then-US Attorney General Jeff Sessions included the Gulf Clan on the list of top transnational criminal organizations posing a threat to the United States.
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