Via Forbes>: Colombia Checks Admiral for Drug Ties

A high-ranking navy officer is being investigated for alleged ties to drug traffickers and has been removed from his post, in a widening probe into connections between Colombia’s military and drug trafficking.

Colombia’s minister of defense said Monday that Rear Admiral Gabriel Arango, who served along Colombia’s Caribbean coast, is the latest in a series of military officers fired for alleged ties to this South American country’s vast cocaine industry.

Colombia’s Caribbean coastal area is rife with big-time drug trafficking and is also the main nexus of the parapolitica business (the infiltration of electoral politcs by paramilitary groups). None of that automatically implicates Arango, of course, but it did provide ample opportunity.