Yolanda de Zakzuk

Aventura, FL. 33 180

March 17,2008

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman

10100 Pines Blvd.
Pembroke Pines, FL 33026
Phone: 954-437-3936
Fax: 954-437-4776

Dear Congresswoman,

We write to you in the knowledge that a woman like you, who has witnessed
injustice, old and new, at home and by state-backed oppressors abroad, will
understand the magnitude of the destruction wrought upon our family.
We are not only the victims of corruption on the part of the Colombian government
but of the United Sates government as well, through the acts of its Agents in the US
Customs Service. (Please see attached FOIA request, still unanswered, and the
complaint which will be filed in US District court) My husband's career on the sea
starts as a fatherless 10 year old boy trying to support a sick mother and smaller
brother by joining the crew of a wooden cargo boat in 1936 and by 21 he was the
Captain of the ship. We were a legitimate enterprise for 30 years before Congress
legislated into existence the war on drugs, and all of the tragedies which have
befallen our family can be traced back directly to Congress' Acts. What do we
mean? We mean that for a five year period my husband pro-actively involved
himself in furthering the drug sting operations dreamt up by US Customs Agent
Victor Thompson, and the men under his command, capture and prosecute tons of
cocaine and dozens of narcotraffickers and every single time we did that we created
more and more enemies. We even saved a US Customs undercover Agent, who was
posted to fictitious duties aboard our ship, just like all three of our ships had US
Customs undercover agents running stings against narcotraffickers and US
government transponders enabling the US government to track the movements of
our ships, when it was discovered by narcotraffickers that he was a US informant he
showed up on our doorstep in the middle of the night, one step ahead of assassins,
and again who saves him at our peril?

We were the tip of your lance in your stated goals in 1988:

"(5) the Federal Government civilian agencies engaged in drug interdiction,

particularly the
United States Customs Service and the Coast Guard, currently lack the aircraft,
ships, radar,
command, control, communications, and intelligence (C31) system, and manpower
resources
necessary to mount a comprehensive attack on the narcotics traffickers who
threaten the United States;"

But globally, the consequences of creating the war on drugs manifested itself even
before we started assisting US Customs in the shape of exorbitant fines levied upon
us for sailors sneaking on board cocaine. We instituted a host of countermeasures
which included paying our ship officers twice the going rate to insure their integrity,
we had an agreement with Colombian port authorities which allowed us to file fake
destination reports to throw off drug dealers stalking our ships, we had Colombian
Police search our ships before leaving port, all our Captains were under orders to
search in international waters and confiscate and/or arrest suspected drugs and
drugtraffickers. We turned over to US Customs any sailors
apprehended with drugs, as well as to Colombian authorities, but the power of drug
money had them free on the streets sooner than we thought possible and again
more enemies. We had bodyguards for close to 15 years provided by the Colombian
National Police and by the Army once (Colombian Army General Eduardo Plata, my
husband's golfing friend); this time span is almost exactly how long our enterprise
lasted under the black market conditions created by the Acts of the US Congress.
My husband suffered two assassination attempts and was tortured for throwing
narcotrafficker's cocaine into the sea in May of 1987 after sneaking back in to
Colombia to oversee our enterprise. This is from El Heraldo, Barranquilla,
Colombia's, leading newspaper recording the incident.
This is when he fled permanently, spiritually demoralized and broken, the rest
f the family had already been forced to leave one month before, April 10th
1987, and from there on, an emergency management was left in place, a management w
o would have never been in charge had we not been forced to flee for our lives.
Since it wasn't their ships, and we could never hope to match what they profite
from abusing our trust and allowing drugs on our ships, three weeks after my h
sband fled one of our ships was seized in the Bahamas, we won the case two years, and
hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees later, but still lost
ur ship, our Don Julio, because she was so thoroughly stripped and no maintenance
was provided to her, water up to her engines, that it would have cost us a fortune
to have it repaired, but by that time we had been destroyed financially by US Cus
oms and their theft of the Don Alejo, our flag ship, 7,100 tons, bought in 1
73 for 2 million dollars through RHR Dee in Rotterdam and financed by Chase Ma
hattan Bank, Marine Midland Bank and F. Marti and Sons on Wall Street, refurbi
hed in Conastil SA, the Colombian government's dry dock in Cartagena, at a cost
of US $450,000.00 in 1984. All of our ships were insured by Lloyd's of London through
their underwriter in Coral Gables, Frank B. Hall. On that episode,
three mont hs after we were forced to abandon our company, we know that manage
ent wasinvolved, but they weren't acting within the scope of their duti
s and it was not for benefit of the corporation, nor were they the owners; i
deed, my husband did not have enough money for a taxi and so rode the public bus
from 1989 until 1992, or so, when he found employment. We can obta
n our bank records which document our ru
n and can provide information which will, if investigated, prove who the culp
it was.Why us? We were normal people who just happened to be successfu
through hard work. My husband was a good member of his community supporting m
ltiple charitable programs. He was the National Baseball Commissioner in Colombia
and sponsored three professional baseball teams, for decades, in order to provide
he youth with opportunity. He donated all the materials to create a bigger stadiu
in Cartagena in the 1960's. Here he is after being knighted by Danish Ambassador
Ole Phillipson, on behalf of the Queen of Denmark, May 5th, 1986, for saving a Danish
citizen and his sailboat fro
drug traffickers and corrupt Colombian National Police, again creating more
enemies.
If you look closely at the group of people in this picture, in our home's back yard,
you can see Roy Apel, the State Department's US Consul.
This, Madame Congresswoman, is the situation Congress has put us in and it is the
evidence we would have provided a Federal Judge had US Customs Agent Victor
Thompson not canceled our visas two weeks after I personally called to insult him,
thereby violating our Due Process rights and our Human Rights.
We believe that there are good people in Congress who will not allow so much
injustice to stand, and as we believe you are one of them, we respectfully request
that you contact the Colombian Embassy on our behalf if only to point out that:

a.) That the amount of time between decisions by the different levels of courts is
unacceptable because it dates our case to the point where the key witnesses (and
victims)
are dead and records gone or hard to find; in effect denying us justice . We could
have
taken the Colombian government to an international tribunal had they not corrupted
the
process by delaying 25 years. And it is not because the Colombian courts always
take
this long, our case is probably the oldest; they had a semi functional judiciary
except
were their political patrons were the defendants, as in our case.

b.) Why has the legal mechanism known as conciliation, legislated into existence by
the
Colombian Congress (Decree 1214, 29th of June, 2000), and in wide practice
throughout
Colombia, not been applied to this case which clearly fits their stated target cases:
resolving the oldest cases thereby clearing up the docket backlog?

Colombian government website for Conciliation: http://www.conciliacion.gov.co/

c.) Firmly state that it's time this case is resolved.

d.) We leave up to you what real help you are willing to go through with for we
believe the
previous points, if brought up, will be ignored with lots of letters and no action.

We would also like to ask that your office appraise Speaker Pelosi's, and the rest of
the Democratic leadership, who can, with one word to the Colombian Embassy,
bring this family a bit of justice and prevent other looming negative consequences.
Ms. Bettyanne Gallagher suggested going through the State Dept., and while this
would also be appreciated, the only locale and moment to obtain closure to this
continuing abuse is in Washington DC, and at this juncture. Fifty years of my
husband's honorable hard work was destroyed by the Acts of Congress; we have no
resources to fight with. We believe it would worthy of the highest principles
espoused by the founding fathers of this country, beautiful and majestic
even, if Congress itself would help right the wrongs we have suffered.
We will be in Washington on the first week of April to seek an audience with Speaker
Pelosi and other national Congressional leaders, and, should you agree, would like
to meet with you as well.

Sincerely,

Yolanda de Zakzuk
On behalf of her children and grandchildren (all US and Colombian citizens born
here)

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Publications

Year 1998 Paper 4

Policing for Profit: The Drug War's Hidden

Economic Agenda

Eric Blumenson
BA, Wesleyan University;
JD, Harvard University

Eva S. Nilsen
B.A. magna cum laude, Yale University
J.D., University of Virginia
LL.M., Georgetown University

Abstract

During the 25 years of its existence, the "War on Drugs" has transformed the
criminal justice system, to the point where the imperatives of drug law enforcement
now drive many of the broader legislative, law enforcement, and corrections
policies in counterproductive ways. One significant impetus for this transf6ation
has been the enactment of forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement agencies
to keep the lion's share of the drug-related assets they seize. This financial
incentive has left many law enforcement agencies dependent on drug law
enforcement to meet their budgetary requirements, at the expense of alternative
goals such as the investigation and prosecution of non-drug crimes, crime
prevention strategies, and drug education and treatment. In this article we present
a legal and empirical
analysis of these laws and their consequences. The empirical data show that the
corruption of law enforcement priorities and wholesale miscarriages of justice
can be attributed to the operation of these incentives, and also help explain why the
drug war continues with such heavy emphasis on law enforcement and
incarceration.
The legal analysis questions the constitutionality of the forfeiture funding
scheme under the due process clause, the appropriations clause, and the separation
of powers.