La Oficina de Envigado ( en, The Office of

Envigado Envigado () is a town southeast of Medellín, Colombia in the department of Antioquia. It is located in the Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley. It borders El Poblado, Medellín to the north, Sabaneta to the south, El Retiro and Caldas ...

) is a

drug cartel A drug cartel is any criminal organization with the intention of supplying drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises. The term was applied when th ...

and criminal organization originally founded as an enforcement and collections arm of Pablo Escobar's

Medellín Cartel The Medellín Cartel ( es, Cartel de Medellín) was a powerful and highly organized Colombian drug cartel and terrorist organization originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia that was founded and led by Pablo Escobar. It is often considered ...

. Despite being noted for its historical affiliation with drug trafficking and other organized crime activities, Oficina de Envigado's criminal activities were no longer centered on direct involvement in such activity by 2019 and are now mainly focused on providing services to lower level drug traffickers and

mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...

groups. It operates throughout Colombia, but mainly in the cities of Medellín and Envigado. It also controlled extortion, gambling, and money laundering businesses within the

Valle de Aburrá Valle may refer to: * Valle (surname) Geography *"Valle", the cultural and climatic zone of the dry subtropical Interandean Valles of the Andes of Peru, Bolivia, and northwest Argentina *University of Valle, a public university in Cali, Colombia ...

that surrounds Medellín. It positioned itself as the chief mediator and debt collector in drug trafficking disputes and maintained major connections with Colombian paramilitaries and

guerillas Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tacti ...

History

La Oficina was founded as an enforcement wing for the

Diego Murillo Bejarano Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano (born 23 February 1961), also known as Don Berna or Adolfo Paz, is a former leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitary group, as well as the leader of The Office of Envigado cartel. His squ ...

, aka Don Berna (a

Popular Liberation Army The Popular Liberation Army ( es, Ejército Popular de Liberación, ''EPL'') is a Colombian anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group created in 1967. Most of its former members demobilized in 1991, forming the Esperanza, Paz y Libe ...

guerrilla deserter), however Murillo fell out with Escobar and eventually joined forces with

Los Pepes Los Pepes, a name derived from the Spanish phrase "Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar" ("Persecuted by Pablo Escobar"), was a vigilante group composed of enemies of Pablo Escobar. They waged a small-scale war against the Medellín Cartel in 1993, whic ...

in order to oust him. Murillo then began to affiliate his Oficina with the

United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia The United Self-Defences of Colombia (''Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia'', or AUC, in Spanish) was a Colombian far-right paramilitary and drug trafficking group which was an active belligerent in the Colombian armed conflict during the period ...

("Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia", AUC, in Spanish), organizing drug trafficking operations on their behalf. La Terraza, a gang of the most feared hit men in the country, is also under La Oficina's control. La Oficina eventually evolved into a sizable narco-trafficking operation spanning from Medellín to the northern coast of Colombia, including the Panamanian border area, drawing many of its leaders from former Colombian paramilitary blocs. Its lower ranks are filled with teenagers and young men from the poorer neighborhoods in the hills of Medellin, mainly Robledo and Manrique, who moonlight as hit men willing to kill for as little as US$25. After the AUC demobilised in 2005, Murillo was arrested for the murder of a local politician, although he managed to run his empire from prison and made a deal with the authorities to use his power to keep violence to a minimum. In 2008, Murillo was extradited along with other paramilitary leaders, and La Oficina was hurt by infighting between rival factions led by Maximiliano Bonilla Orozco, alias Valenciano, and Jordan Acevedo, alias Sebastian, a native of Barrio Popular in Medellin, as well as conflict with the Usuga Clan. Bonilla was arrested in 2011, while Vargas was arrested at his ranch in August 2012. On July 20, 2014, Hernán Alonso Villa, better known as El Ratón (The Mouse), was stopped en route to one of his safe houses in the south-eastern province of Alicante carrying €40,000 (£31,660) in cash which, according to police, came from drug running and assassinations Villa served as head of Oficina's military wing and was believed to have carried out 400 murders, and other criminal acts including disappearances, extortions and kidnappings. On December 9, 2017, then Oficina leaders Juan Carlos Mesa Vallejo, also known as “Tom” or “Carlos Chata,” was arrested on December 9 while celebrating his 50th birthday and was charged with aggravated criminal association, illegally carrying military-grade weapons and use of false documents. One of the leaders of La Oficina, Sebastián Murillo Echeverri, alias "Lindo" and "Lindolfo", son of Rodrigo Murillo alias Jimmy from the Medellin Cartel, was arrested on February 6, 2018 in El Poblado, Medellin along with several high-ranking members of the Group. On March 23, 2019, Iván Darío Suárez Muñoz, alias “Iván el Barbado,” was arrested during a raid on a luxury condo in Piedecuesta, a town in the northeast department of Santander. On April 3, 2019, Mauricio Zapata Orozco, alias “Chicho,” was arrested at his parents’ home in the wealthy El Poblado district. Orozco came to lead “La Terraza,” one of the Oficina's subgroups, two years after his release from prison. On May 8, 2019, John Eduard Barbosa, an ex-police officer and Oficina lieutenant, was captured while driving in Sabaneta, on the outskirts of Medellín. The arrests of these three individuals left Oficina de Evigado with only five remaining operatives and leaders still at large in the group's homeland of Medellín.

Transformation into organized crime coalition

On June 11, 2019, John Fredy Yepes, alias "Clemente" was arrested.https://colombiareports.com/medellins-top-mafia-boss-arrested/https://colombiareports.com/medellins-top-mafia-boss-arrested/ Succeeding Tom as head of the Oficina de Envigado, Clemente was also described as "Medellin's top mafia boss." His arrest was the latest of more than 135 Oficina bosses and gang leaders arrested over the past three years who made it to the top of the crime organization in little more than 10 years. La Oficina's board of directors was also reported to consist of only five leaders and operatives. Despite this, overall Oficina membership was believed to be at 1,500, The next month, however, it was reported that La Oficina was no longer an individual organization and was transformed into a "mafia federation" consisting of smaller organized crime organizations. As members of La Oficina, these organizations also serve as coalition partners.

Gang activities

As well as drugs, La Oficina controls a number of casinos and gambling establishments, which it uses to launder money. La Oficina also has links with local authority figures and police officers, some of whom moonlight as assassins, and it has alliances with Los Rastrojos and

Los Zetas Los Zetas (, Spanish for "The Zs") is a Mexican criminal syndicate, regarded as one of the most dangerous of Mexico's drug cartels. They are known for engaging in brutally violent "shock and awe" tactics such as beheadings, torture, and indiscr ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. In 2014, Insight Crime reported that La Oficina's had declined due to infighting. In 2017 However, Insight Crime reported that the group had recovered. In July 2019, Insight Crime stated "today’s Oficina is a coalition of mid-sized criminal organizations that provide services to transnational drug traffickers and other mafia elites, and use alliances with gangs to control territory and criminal activities in Medellín. As such, it is perhaps the most complex example of the Colombian mafia today: a tangled web of service providers and subcontractors involved in everything from money laundering and the international cocaine trade to street level drug sales and micro-extortion."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Office of Envigado Drug cartels in Colombia Medellín Cartel Terrorism in Colombia 1993 establishments in Colombia Organised crime groups in Spain Organized crime groups in Argentina Organized crime groups in Portugal