Q COSTA RICA — The Fiscalía General (Office of the Attorney General), in collaboration with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other international agencies, has set new, high-level targets in the fight against transnational organized crime.
They will now pursue “invisible drug traffickers” and public officials who collaborate with drug trafficking operations, explained Attorney General Carlo Díaz following his reelection on Monday.
Having concluded a “first phase”—which focused on the pursuit and capture of traditional drug traffickers and criminal structures already identified locally—the joint strategy has evolved into a far more complex level of investigation.
This cooperation between the Fiscalía and foreign authorities has now entered a second operational phase. This new stage centers on pursuing and dismantling so-called “invisible drug traffickers”—a term borrowed from Colombian terminology to describe criminals who operate from the shadows of power rather than from the streets.
The targets in this second phase include individuals who hold positions of significant economic power or wield strong political influence within society.
These individuals maintain a facade as successful businesspeople, hiding behind ostensibly legitimate enterprises and activities. This allows them to move within high-level circles without being directly linked to drug trafficking.
In addition to these powerful figures, this investigative phase directly targets public officials and political figures who, through acts of corruption, collaborate with or facilitate the operations of these transnational criminal networks.
These individuals do not fit the traditional profile of a street-level criminal; instead, they appear as “successful businesspeople” or political figures who operate under a veneer of legality to conceal their ties to drug trafficking and engage in money laundering.
The capture of Guobin Tam Zhang, a Costa Rican of Chinese descent, also known as Juan Carlos Tam—who moved within the political circles of the ruling party, Partido Pueblo Soberano (PPSO—is a reflection of that change in direction, according to Díaz.
Tam was arrested on October 2 for extradition to the United States.