By WILL LESTER
.c The Associated Press 

    MIAMI (May 19)  The Cali cartel paid $6 million to the campaign of
Colombian President Ernesto Samper and additional millions to other Colombian
politicians while hiring top lawyers in this country to help cover its
tracks, federal prosecutors said today.

    ''In short, what they did was buy their own government,'' Assistant U.S.
Attorney Ed Ryan said in opening statements of two cartel lawyers and of four
men charged as top North American distributors for the Colombian cocaine
cartel.

    Samper has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and a loyalist Congress last year
cleared him of charges he solicited the cartel cash.

    Ryan outlined the smuggling history of ''the biggest and the best'' of
the crime organizations that have smuggled cocaine into this country. And he
said two of their lawyers in this country, Michael Abbell and William Moran,
were crucial to keeping the cocaine flowing.

    ''The work of these two lawyers reaches into every case of a cartel
figure arrested in this country,'' Ryan said, claiming they prepared false
affidavits to clear the cocaine's Colombian chiefs and delivered payments to
family members of drug defendants and their lawyers.

    Albert Krieger, attorney for Moran, argued that his client was doing his
job as a criminal defense attorney and providing a service required under the
U.S. Constitution. He said the facts of the case will show that Moran did
nothing more than present an aggressive defense of drug clients and was not
involved in a conspiracy.

    The lawyerdefendants include the 56yearold Abbell of Washington, a
former Justice Department extradition lawyer who prosecutors say went to work
for the Cali cartel 12 years ago. Miami attorney Moran, 58, is accused of
alerting the Colombians to the identity of an informant who was later killed.

    The defense will continue its opening statements Tuesday. The trial is
expected to last up to four months.

    The Cali cartel smuggled more than 250 tons of cocaine into the United
States over 13 years and returned billions of dollars in profits to Colombia,
Ryan said.

    The cartel, with its knowledge of law enforcement and businesslike
methods, smuggled cocaine by the ton in hollowedout lumber, concrete posts,
frozen broccoli and coffee shipments through ports in South Florida and
Tampa, Ryan said.

    Later, cartel bosses grew tired of frequent arrests in Florida and began
importing the cocaine in 727 jets that flew into Mexico so that the cocaine
could be smuggled in tractortrailer trucks across the Mexican border, Ryan
said. He said the cocaine often was shipped through other countries,
including Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala, to fool authorities
wary of any shipments from Colombia.

    Couriers were hired to take the money back to Colombia, he said.

    ''Cocaine means money in amounts that are staggering,'' Ryan said,
explaining that the money was kept in vaulted stash houses in New York,
Florida and Texas before being smuggled south.

    The cartel enlisted dozens of operatives in Latin America and this
country to make their pipeline work, he said. About 70 of those operatives
were named in the June 1995 indictment that led to the trial, the largest
drug case brought by the federal government in five years.

    The government indicted six lawyers, the cartel's Colombian bosses and
dozens of people accused of keeping the cocaine pipeline open into this
country.

    About 30 defendants, including four lawyers, pleaded guilty to lesser
charges. Three other dozen defendants are fugitives outside this country.

    The lawyers on trial are accused of providing more than legal
representation  relaying death threats from the Colombian chiefs, drafting
false affidavits to clear their clients and disguising the drug origins of
money spent on legal fees.

    When the government charged the lawyers with the same racketeering and
conspiracy counts faced by their former clients, the national criminal
defense bar cried foul. But the government maintained the lawyers crossed the
line of legal representation.

    The kingpins of the Cali drug cartel are all dead or in jail. The arrests
have splintered cartel operations in Colombia, and police are focusing on
lesserknown traffickers trying to control the business.

APNY051997 1512EDT

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news
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