For his head they offered $5 m, who's the most powerful drug boss after Pablo Escobar?

Authorities said intelligence led by the United States and Britain provided sufficient information than 500 soldiers and members of the Colombian special forces found Otoniel in the jungle in the northwest province of the country, and the “broke eight sieges of guards” continually following him.

“Otonel was the world's most formidable drug smuggler, a murderer of police, soldiers, social leaders and child recruiter”, former Colombian President Ivan Duka was quoted as saying after the criminal was arrested.

This shock is comparable only to Pablo Escobar's fall in the 1990s”, Duka added.

Clan del Golfo “stood fearful” in northern Colombia because they did nothing to gain control over central cocaine smuggling routes from Central America to U.S.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government put him on the list of the most wanted long ago and offered a $5 million reward for his arrest.

He was sentenced for the first time in 2009 to a court in Manhattan for illegal drug trafficking, but also for the support of radical right-wing paramilitary groups that the United States declared terrorist, writes tg.

As further known, he was later convicted of smuggling dozens of tons of cocaine to the United States between 2003 and 2014 through Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Honduras, add to this the killings of police officers and the sexual abuse of children and young people.

He began his career, with his brother Juan Dios, as a fighter in the left-wing guerrilla group “Population Liberation Army”.

They were not driven by ideological impulses, so when the Army signed a peace agreement with the government in 2006, Otoniel and his brother refused, defected to the underworld and began conducting operations in the strategic region of Golfo de Urrabá in the north.

The Cartel was later appointed according to the balloon. As noted, most cocaine shipments go north from Golfo de Urrabá. Later, they will begin to support the right-wing guerrilla groups.

In contrast, his brother was the first head of the criminal organization, but he was killed in 2012 in a raid on the night of the shift of the years. Otoniel escaped and took over the cartel.

He and his bloody men soon became known as brutal and abusive murderers mainly of girls.

It is estimated that at the time of his arrest, Clan del Golfo had about 1,200 members, most of whom were recruited by radical right-wing paramilitary groups. And they operate in 10 of Colombia's 32 provinces.

In addition to their main business, drugs, they were also involved in illegal mines, and the area in which they operated was controlled by violence: local leaders who would object were disappearing.

They also earned money from extortion. Their expansion was widespread, members of the group were arrested in Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Peru, and Spain.

The American Prosecutor's Office declared the clan a “heavily armed, extremely violent criminal organisation”.

Nowhere without a special mattress

Operation “Agamemnon” hit hard in 2016, in which a large number of Otoniel's associates were arrested, and authorities dealt a heavy blow to the clan's financial system. Then continued pursuit began.

Like any mobster, Otoniel hid in remote rural parts of the country, in the jungle, changing homes where he slept every night. But he always had to have an orthopedic mattress next to him, on which he slept because of a back injury, distorting the disk.

The houses he was staying in were not palaces but had satellite antennas, and the police found expensive perfumes, choice drinks, and food.

He successfully hid in the Urrabá region for years, and security forces were powerless to try to find him. He also used trained dogs to warn him if he appeared to someone he did not know.

Authorities managed to catch one of the dogs and train him to search for Otoniel. According to foreign media, it was almost surprising a video he published a year later when Pope Francis came to the country.

He also demanded that his group be allowed to hand over weapons and to be privatised as part of a government-led peace process with FARC (The Columbia Revolutionary Forces). The government declined.

Dark clouds over the clan began to appear in March of this year when Nina Johanna ésuga, Otoniel's sister, was arrested. It was responsible for managing the funds coming from “The” and the key “work” was money laundering “dirty”.

She took office in 2015 after the arrest of Blanca Senobia Madrid Benjumea, “La Flaka”, a weak partner of Otoniel.

A cousin of Harlyson ésuga was responsible for caring for the streets that were transported drugs from Central America, and he was connected to Mexican cartels. He was arrested in 2015.

In July of this year, the Colombian security forces, in collaboration with Panama and the United States, seized 5.4 tonnes of cocaine belonging to Otoniel.

Meanwhile, experts confirm the importance of arrest, but warning of possible violent consequences and an internal struggle for the country held by Otoniel.

They stress, however, that the operation will be a smaller blow to cocaine business than Escobar's, because it is now evidently more fragmented than in the time of the legendary criminal.

And Sergio Guzman, director of the Columbia Rysk Analysis, believes a new leader will soon appear, which will be even worse.