WASHINGTON - A Colombian soccer club was characterized by the Bush administration Tuesday as a front for one of the South American country's four most wanted cocaine kingpins.
The Treasury Department announced that it was freezing any U.S. assets of Cortulua, a second-division soccer club based in Tulua, near Cali in southern Colombia.
Cortulua was named as one of 10 companies and seven individuals allegedly operating on behalf of Carlos Alberto Renteria Mantilla, one of the four leaders of the Norte del Valle cartel, Colombia's largest drug trafficking operation.
Cortulua has played in the Colombian first division as recently as 2005 and appears poised to return to the top flight next season.
The designation freezes any of Cortulua's assets in the United States and bars U.S. citizens and companies from having commercial transactions with it. It was not immediately clear whether the team controls any U.S. assets or does business with American interests.
It was the fifth such action by the American government against the financial network of Renteria, also known as "Beto Renteria."
Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said Beto Renteria invests "his illicit proceeds across businesses in Colombia and offshore locations." The department's action, Szubin said, has "taken aim at Beto Renteria's organization, exposing his web of front companies and targeting their assets."
Officials suspect Renteria's network of shipping 500 tons of cocaine into the United States over the past decade.
Former Cortulua team president Oscar Ignacio Martan Rodriguez, who is a member of the Colombian soccer federation's executive committee, was among the seven people the U.S. government accused of ties to Renteria.
Martan, a Cortulua shareholder since 1992, said that living in the same small town he knew Renteria, but denied having business dealings with him.
"It was stunned frozen when I heard the news," Martan told The Associated Press. "It came as a big surprise because we've always been closely monitored by authorities and never had any problems."
Renteria was named a "specially designated narcotics trafficker" by the department in March 2005. The U.S. government has offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to his capture.
The club, in a statement on its website, said Tulua's mayor had declared Wednesday a day of "civic pride." It invited fans to the team's stadium to celebrate its possible return to the first division and protest what it called a smear campaign against its ownership.
