The wild life of Carlos Lehder, Pablo Escobar’s drug trafficking partner

Revolutionizing the cocaine business

Lehder revolutionized drug smuggling in the late 1970s. He bought a small island in the Bahamas called Norman’s Cay, just 340 kilometers (211 miles) off the Florida coast, bribed Bahamian authorities and began transporting tons of white Colombian snow to the US in small airplanes. The planes flew low, escaping the view of watchful US authorities. The risky and far-less profitable method of having drug couriers carry cocaine on or in their bodies on commercial flights became a thing of the past.

Instead, Lehder’s method allowed traffickers to move unimaginable quantities of cocaine. At one point, it was estimated that four out of every five bags of cocaine that made it into the US were delivered by Lehder’s fleet of planes. Crazy Charlie was making billions and living it up; the island became a hotspot for wild, drug-fueled orgies.

Testifying against Manuel Noriega

But in the mid-1980s, the US finally got wise to Lehder’s transport routes and put an end to the party. From that moment on, his star began to fade with Escobar.

His trial in the US also signaled the start of new policy direction for Colombia: Lehder was the first drug smuggler the South American country had ever extradited to the US. Hundreds would follow.

Three years later Crazy Charlie entered a plea deal with US authorities.

Lehder claims he was promised that if he testified against Panama’s authoritarian ruler and drug boss Manuel Noriega, US officials would knock his sentence down to 30 years. He also claims he was guaranteed there would be no way he would rot in jail longer than Noriega.

Lehder agreed, but his sentence was only reduced to 55 years, while the former Panamanian president was extradited to France in 2010 and spent the last weeks of his life under house arrest in Panama before dying of cancer in 2017.