DIS (Costa Rica) | intelNews.org

CIA behind ‘illegal’ anti-drug operation in Costa Rica

March 25, 2011 by intelNews 3 Comments

Costa Rica

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An espionage operation against drug trafficking by a mysterious unit within the Costa Rican intelligence service was organized and funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency, it has been alleged. The operation, codenamed CINEC, was revealed by Costa Rica’s former Minister of Public Security, Rogelio Ramos, in an interview earlier this week with the country’s leading newspaper, La Nación. Ramos told the newspaper that CINEC was conducted for a period of ten years by a group of “special agents” operating out of the Dirección de Inteligencia Seguridad (DIS), Costa Rica’s intelligence agency. The former government minister said CINEC members were stationed in houses throughout the country that were leased by front-companies operating on behalf of the CIA, and that they used equipment, including vehicles, supplied by the US agency. He also said that CINEC operatives were recruited, vetted, administered polygraph tests, and trained by the CIA. According to the Nación article, Ramos said that operation CINEC included activities that “are not legal”. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Central America, CINEC, Costa Rica, DIS (Costa Rica), Ministry of Public Security (Costa Rica), narcotics trade, News, Roberto Solórzano, Rogelio Ramos, United States, US embassy in Costa Rica

Costa Rican political police rocked by high-level corruption scandal

January 5, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

DIS scandal

For years, Costa Rica’s unions and opposition activists have accused the country’s political police, the Dirección de Inteligencia y Seguridad (DIS), of illegally spying on lawful political activity. Yet their allegations never made it into the US State Department’s annual human rights reports on Costa Rica. The Department’s latest report claims that the country’s “civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces”. Last November, however, government investigators uncovered an enormous money-laundering cartel operating inside DIS, whose head was no other than the organization’s Deputy Director, Roberto Guillén. Guillén, who was forced to step down on November 25, employed DIS computers to access private information of unsuspecting citizens, and used the data to launder nearly half a million dollars in illegal transfers to himself and others. Read more of this post