New Probe Targets Samper Ties to Cartel

Colombian President Ernesto Samper is the target of a new probe into his alleged financial dealings with the Cali drug cartel, judicial sources said. A preliminary investigation, opened by the Committee of Accusations of the House of Representatives, focuses on charges that Samper used his post as head of the Development Ministry in 1991 to raise campaign funds for political cronies, the sources said. Sources in the chief prosecutor’s office said some of the funds allegedly raised, and later distributed through Samper’s private secretary, came in the form of checks drawn on the accounts of front-companies for the Cali drug cartel.