Pure Narco

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‘If Howard Marks was the king of the cannabis smuggle, Luis Navia is the Howard Marks of the cocaine trade.’
- GRAHAM HONEY, Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise Senior Investigation Officer

‘As a former police officer and homicide investigator in the Houston Police Department, I saw another side of drug trafficking, as I investigated murders that resulted from drug-trafficking deals gone bad to kidnappings for ransom on drug debts. I subsequently made the jump to federal law enforcement as a Special Agent with the United States Customs Service , now United States Homeland Security Investigations .
‘In Houston, as part of a large-scale drug smuggling investigation, I was assigned as the case agent for the prosecution of the captain and crew of the M/V Cannes and brought them to trial and sentencing for a shipment of cocaine that totalled four tons. We knew then that the criminal organisation behind it was large in terms of the amount of cocaine shipped worldwide – we just didn’t know how large. The Cannes would in turn lead us to Luis Navia, one of the biggest drug traffickers ever known – but never heard of.
‘Jesse Fink’s in-depth, entertaining and informative account of Luis’s life during the height of the cocaine trade in the United States in the 1980s and ’90s is like a speck in the eyes of a race-car driver moving at 200 miles an hour, albeit a large speck. PURE NARCO reveals how a seemingly regular “businessman” can in reality be a successful drug trafficker.’
– VICENTE M. GARCIA, United States Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Special Agent in Charge

‘With a cast of wild, grotesque and often deadly characters, strapped into a rollercoaster they cannot or will not get off, PURE NARCO is a deliriously pleasurable ride. Luis Navia was a key trafficker for the biggest Colombian and Mexican cartels, and his insight into how they flooded the USA and Europe with drugs is unparalleled. This is the best insider account ever written of the global cocaine trade and the outrageous but precarious lives of those at the top.’
– PETER WALSH, author of DRUG WAR: THE SECRET HISTORY

‘During my 30-year career in federal law enforcement, I often wondered what the back story was to some of the people and organisations I investigated. Cops tend to only see the criminal and we forget that everyone has family and a story. PURE NARCO is a true story of redemption ... it offers a rare glimpse into the life of a drug smuggler from the MIAMI VICE era to the end of the millennium, when it all came crashing down for Luis Navia.’
– NIGEL BROOKS, United States Customs Service Senior Special Agent

‘A rare insight into the drug traffickers’ world and law enforcement's efforts to arrest them and seize the drugs.’
- GRAHAM TITMUSS, Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise Investigation Officer

With a foreword by ERIC KOLBINSKY, DEA Special Agent

‘I was a drug trafficker in the true sense of the word: a pure narco.’ – LUIS NAVIA

It’s a life story that reads like something out of a John Grisham or Elmore Leonard novel that it’s remarkable it has remained untold for so long.

Careers in the cocaine-trafficking business are usually short. It’s not only a dangerous profession, fraught with the possibility of capture and long jail sentences, but it can be deadly if the cartels get to you first.

Not for Luis Antonio Navia.

For 25 years the Cuban-American smuggled hundreds of tons of white powder for the biggest cartels in Colombia and Mexico, including Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel.

In a profession populated by thugs, Navia’s dress sense and good manners earned him the nickname ‘El Senador’ . He refused to carry a weapon.

What made him good at his job was amassing trusted contacts, losing very few shipments of coke, and maintaining a low profile. He also maintained a normal family life with a Colombian wife and two young children.

But he was never far removed from the most brutal violence imaginable.

One friend got his head cut off. Another was hit over the head, put in a 55-gallon drum full of cement and dumped in a canal. Navia himself was kidnapped three times and went close to being fed alive to crocodiles.

Somehow through it all he managed to survive and spent two decades fooling the DEA and other law-enforcement agencies.

That was until he came under the radar of Robert Harley, a tenacious US Customs special agent in Key West, Florida, who was determined to bring him to justice.

What followed was an international game of cat-and-mouse that culminated in Navia’s 2000 arrest in Venezuela in one of the biggest antinarcotics takedowns of all time, the 12-nation Operation Journey.

Spanning decades, continents and featuring a who’s who of the drug trade, PURE NARCO is a fast-paced adventure ride into the dark underworld of cocaine trafficking, written with the cooperation of a dozen law-enforcement agents from the world’s top antinarcotics forces in the United States and Great Britain.

It also contains insider insights into how the global drug business operates and offers some cogent solutions to the never-ending ‘war on drugs’.

Navia served his time in jail and is now free to tell his tale. His is the rare perspective of someone who has worked on both sides of that war: as a cocaine trafficker and US Government consultant.

This book is a redemption story. Luis Navia, the pure narco, has gone full circle.