Sinaloa Cartel May Have Dug a Prison Tunnel to Bust Out a Serbian Drug Lord

LIMA, Peru — Police have uncovered a tunnel on the outskirts of Peru’s largest prison, thought to have been dug by the Sinaloa Cartel to spring a Serbian drug lord.

The discovery outside the Castro Castro prison followed months of investigation, local media reported, after the authorities learned last year that the cartel was trying to break Zoran Jaksic, nicknamed the “man of 40 identities,” from the crumbling, overcrowded penitentiary in Lima’s gritty Lurigancho district.

The bald, gaunt and towering Serbian was sentenced last year by a Lima court to 25 years after being convicted of leading a drug gang, known as the Grupo América. Jaksic’s organization was allied with the Mexican cartel, founded by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. 

Guzmán is notorious for twice having escaped from custody in Mexico, the second time in 2015 from the maximum security Altiplano prison via a tunnel nearly a mile long. He was subsequently recaptured and extradited to the U.S., where he was convicted and is now serving life. The Sinaloa Cartel is known to specialize in the creation of complex tunnels. The one Guzmán escaped from was equipped with lights, a motorcycle on rails and a system to pump in fresh air.

The Serbian was arrested in 2016 as raids across Peru led to the seizure of nearly a ton of cocaine, thought to be headed to Europe. Jaksic, who is fighting extradition to Greece where he faces a 13-year sentence for drug trafficking, was moved as a precaution from Castro Castro several months ago to a high security penitentiary, Piedras Gordas, on a bleak section of the Pacific coast north of Lima.

It’s likely construction on the tunnel ceased once Jaksic was moved. The 600-foot tunnel discovered this week began in a house several blocks from Castro Castro and had another 400 feet still to be dug before surfacing in Jaksic’s cell, from where he is said to have run a restaurant for other prisoners, a common practice in some Peruvian jails, where the inmates are responsible for their own food.

It was five feet high and four feet wide, with pipes carrying water to soften the earth, according to local media reports. It was being dug by hand, with three or four men working each shift to avoid generating vibrations or noise. Neighbors said that dump trucks ferried away earth and rubble at the rate of one or two a day. Officers found construction helmets, sacks of earth, knee protectors and tools in the tunnel. 

Susana Silva Hasembank, head of Peru’s prison agency, INPE, said that the authorities had known about the existence of the tunnel for two years. It was unclear why it had taken them so long to actually locate it.

“What we are going to do is reinforce security measures both in the prison as well as in the area around it, and increase the intelligence operations which allowed us to avoid, just in time, a situation that we would have regretted,” said Silva Hasembank.

Peru is usually the world’s second biggest cocaine producer after Colombia, although it does occasionally overtake its northeastern neighbor. Cocaine production in Peru rocketed 36 percent to 178,000 acres last year, with a projected annual production of 715 tons, according to the White House.

While most of Colombia’s cocaine supplies the North American market, production in Peru and Bolivia is generally destined for other markets, from Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro to Moscow and Sydney. As a result, traffickers from Europe and elsewhere often head to Peru to do business and organize shipments.