YOZAK_WASSERMAN

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Yolanda de Zakzuk20505 East Country Club Drive Apt. 1838Aventura, FL. 33 180March 17,2008Tel305 4989197

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman10100 Pines Blvd.Pembroke Pines, FL 33026Phone: 954-437-3936Fax: 954-437-4776Dear Congresswoman,We write to you in the knowledge that a woman like you, who has witnessed injustice old and new, athome and against state-backed oppressors abroad, will understand the magnitude of the destructionwrought upon our family.

We are not only the victims of corruption on the part of the Colombian government but of the Unitedd ~ t a t e sovernment 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'scareer on the sea starts as a fatherless 10 year old boy trying to support a sick mother and smaller brotherby joining the crew of a wooden cargo boat in 1936 and by 21 he was the Captain of the ship. We were alegitimate enterprise for 30 years before Congress legislated into existence the war on drugs, and all of thetragedies which have befallen our family can be traced back directly to Congress' Acts. What do wemean? We mean that for a five year period my husband pro-actively involved himself in furthering thedrug sting operations dreamt up by US Customs Agent Victor Thompson, and the men under hiscommand, capture and prosecute tons of cocaine and dozens of narcotraffickers and every single time wedid that we created more and more enemies. We even saved a US Customs undercover Agent, who wasposted to fictitious duties aboard our ship, just like all three of our ships had US Customs undercoveragents running stings against narcotraffickers and US government transponders enabling the USgovernment to track the movements of our ships, when it was discovered by narcotraffickers that he was aUS informant he showed up on our doorstep in the middle of the night, one step ahead of assassins, andagain who saves him at our peril?We were the tip of your ance in your stated goals in 1988:"(5) the Federal Government civilian agencies engaged in drug interdiction, particularly theUnited States Customs Service and the Coast Guard, currently lack the aircraft, ships, radar,


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command, control, communications, and intelligence (C31) system, and manpower resourcesnecessary to mount a comprehensive attack on the narcotics traffickers who threaten the UnitedStates;"But globally, the consequences of creating the war on drugs manifested itself even before we startedassisting US Customs in the shape of exorbitant fines levied upon us for sailors sneaking on boardcocaine. We instituted a host of countermeasures which included paying our ship officers twice the goingrate to insure their integrity, we had an agreement with Colombian port authorities which allowed us tofile fake destination reports to throw off drug dealers stalking our ships, we had Colombian Police searchour ships before leaving port, all our Captains were under orders to search in international waters andconfiscate andlor arrest suspected drugs and drugtraffickers. We turned over to US Customs any sailorsapprehended with drugs, as well as to Colombian authorities, but the power of drug money had them freeon the streets sooner than we thought possible and again more enemies. We had bodyguards for 15 yearsprovided by the Colombian National Police and by the Army once (Colombian Army General EduardoPlata, my husband's golfing friend); this time span is almost exactly how long our enterprise lasted underthe black market conditions created by the Acts of the US Congress. My husband suffered twoassassination attempts and was tortured for throwing narcotrafficker's cocaine into the sea in May of 1987after sneaking back in to Colombia to oversee our enterprise. That's when he fled permanently, we hadalready been forced to leave one month before, and from there on, an emergency management was left inplace, a management who 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 profited from abusing our trustand allowing drugs on our ships, three weeks after my husband fled one of our ships was seized in theBahamas, we won the case two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees later, but still

4 lost our ship, our Don Julio, because she was so thoroughly stripped and no maintenance was provided toher, water up to her engines, that it would have cost us a fortune to have it repaired, but by that time wehad been destroyed financially by US Customs and their theft of the Don Alejo, our flag ship, 7,100 tons,bought in 1973 for 2 million dollars through RHR Dee in Rotterdam and financed by Chase ManhattanBank, Marine Midland Bank and F.Marti and Sons on Wall Street, refurbished in Conastil SA, theColombian government's dry dock in Cartagena, at a cost ofUS $450,000.00 in 1984. All of our shipswere insured by Lloyd's of London through their underwriter in Coral Gables, Frank B. Hall. On thatepisode, three months after we were forced to abandon our company, we know that management wasinvolved, but they weren't acting within the scope of their duties and it was not for benefit of thecorporation, nor were they the owners; indeed, my husband did not have enough money for a taxi and sorode the public bus from 1989 until 1992, or so, when he found employment. We can obtain our bankrecords which document our ruin and can provide information which will, if investigated , prove whothe culprit was.Why us? We were normal people who just happened to be successful through hard work. My husbandwas a good member of his community supporting multiple charitable programs. He was the NationalBaseball Commissioner in Colombia and sponsored three professional baseball teams in order to providethe youth with opportunity. He donated all the materials to create a bigger stadium in Cartagena in the1960's. He was knighted by the Queen of Denmark, April or May of 1986(looking for newspaperarchives) for saving a Danish citizen and his sailboat from drug traffickers and corrupt ColombianNational Police, again creating more enemies.


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This, Madame Congresswoman, is the situation Congress ~ u ts in and it is the evidence we would haveprovided a Federal Judge had US Customs Agent Victor Thompson not cancelled our visas two weeks,

Cthereby violating our Due Process rights, after I personally called to insult him.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 ourbehalf if only to point out that:

a.) That the amount of time between decisions by the different levels of courts is,--.*acceptable because it dates our case to the point where the key witnesses (and victims)

are dead and records gone or h d o find; in effect denied us justice .We could havetaken the Colombian government to an international tribunal had they not corrupted theprocess by delaying 25 years. And it is not because the Colombian courts always takethis long, our case is probably the oldest; they had a semi functional udiciary exceptwere their political patrons were the defendants, as in our case.

b.) Why has the legal mechanism known as conciliation, legislated into existence by theColombian Congress (Decree 1214, 29thof June, 2000), and in wide practice throughoutColombia, 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 andprevent other looming negative consequences. Ms. Bettyanne Gallagher suggested going through theState Dept., and while this would also be appreciated, the only locale and moment to obtain closure to thiscontinuing abuse is in Washington DC, and at this juncture. Fifty years of my husband's honorable hardwork was destroyed by the Acts of Congress; we have no resources to fight with. We believe it wouldworthy of the highest principles espoused by the founding fathers of this country, beautiful and majesticeven, 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,

@A1 nda de Zakzuk !i!dTkOn behalf of her children and grandchildren (all US and Colombian citizens born here)

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Suffolk University Law School Faculty PublicationsYear 1998Paper 4Policing for Profit: The Drug War's HiddenEconomic AgendaEric BlumensonBA, Wesleyan University;JD, Harvard UniversityEva S. NilsenB.A. magna cum kiude, Yale UniversityJ.D., University of VirginiaLL.M., Georgetown University

Abstract4During the 25 years of its existence, the "War on Drugs" has transformed thecriminaljustice system, to the point where the imperatives of drug law enforcement

\ inow drive many of the broader legislative, law enforcement, and correctionspoliciesin counterproductive ways. One significant impetus for this t ransf6at ionhas been the enactment of forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement agenciesto keep the lion's share of the drug-related assets they seize. This financialincentive has left many law enforcement agencies dependent on drug lawenforcement to meet their budgetary requirements,at the expense of alternativegoals such asthe investigation and prosecution of non-drug crimes, crime prevention strategies,and drug education and treatment. In this article we present a legal and empiricalanalysis of these laws and their consequences. The empirical data show that thecorruption of law enforcement priorities and wholesale miscarriages of justicecanbe attributed to the operation of these incentives, and also help explain why thedrug war continues with such heavy emphasis on law enforcement andincarceration.The legal analysis questions the constitutionality of the forfeiture fundingscheme under the due process clause, the appropriations clause, and the separationof powers.

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