The former leader of Panama’s largest drug trafficking organization that conspired to smuggle tons of cocaine into the United States has been found guilty by a jury of a federal narcotics trafficking charge, the Justice Department announced.
Jorge Rubén Camargo-Clarke, 46, a.k.a. “Cool nene,” was found guilty late Thursday of one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine for the purpose of unlawful importation.
Camargo has been in federal custody since March 2023 when he was extradited from Costa Rica.
According to evidence presented at a four-day trial, Camargo was the head of the Bagdad syndicate, the largest drug trafficking organization in Panama. From that position, Camargo directed the actions of approximately 4,000 narcotraffickers in Panama and Colombia, all working in service of his drug trafficking enterprise.
Camargo and the Bagdad syndicate controlled the importation and exportation of cocaine along the majority of Panama’s Pacific coast. In 2017 alone, Panama’s national security forces seized approximately 7.9 tons of cocaine from areas in Panama under Camargo’s control.
Camargo communicated via Blackberry Messenger with various co-conspirators, including Colombian cocaine sources of supply, to move thousands of kilograms of cocaine north from their source in Colombia to Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and elsewhere. Camargo personally coordinated numerous large-scale cocaine shipments by boat out of Colombia for the purpose of distribution in the United States and elsewhere, and instructed co-conspirators where to deliver, hide, and then transfer cocaine along his supply routes for purposes of moving the cocaine north, for ultimate importation into the United States.
