Costa Rica ex-security minister charged in US with cocaine smuggling conspiracy

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A former security minister and ex-judge from Costa Rica was charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to import cocaine after being detained by the Central American nation’s judicial police in late June following a U.S. extradition request, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

Celso Gamboa Sanchez, 49, a former security minister and judge, was apprehended in San Jose in late June while his alleged associate, Edwin Lopez Vega, was arrested in Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean region.

He was named in a federal indictment returned by a U.S. grand jury this week in the Eastern District of Texas charging him with conspiracy and manufacturing and distributing cocaine knowing it would be unlawfully imported into the U.S., the Justice Department said.

The indictment alleges that Gamboa Sanchez conspired with and assisted other international drug traffickers to manufacture, distribute, and transport significant quantities of cocaine, much of which was trafficked through Costa Rica, to the United States. The former minister’s representative could not immediately be contacted.

Gamboa Sanchez held many governmental positions in Costa Rica, including that of minister of public security in 2014, a position charged with overseeing crime prevention in the country, and as a judge from 2016 to 2018, the Justice Department said.

He remains jailed in Costa Rica and is awaiting extradition to the United States.  

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell)