Colombia has seized hundreds of drug stores across the country suspected of money laundering for the Cali cocaine cartel, in the biggest property seizure in Colombia's history.
A team of 465 prosecutors, accompanied by 3,000 police and 20 accountants, began to take possession of Drogas La Rebaja stores countrywide, according to law enforcement officials.
"This is the largest occupation of property linked to the drug trade in the history of the country," said a federal prosecutor.
The 432-store chain, valued at about $215 million, was founded by bosses of the Cali cocaine cartel in the 1980s. It sold the stores to employees of the chain in the mid-1990s when the cartel was declining in power. Since then authorities say the stores have continued laundering drugs-related money.
The stores will continue to be managed and run by chain employees under the supervision of government overseers.
The stores were the target of a bombing campaign from 1988 to 1990 when the Cali cartel was at war with Pablo Escobar's Medellin drug group.
The move was part of President Alvaro Uribe's campaign against the drug trade, which fuels a 40-year guerrilla war that claims thousands of lives a year.