5 Countries Freeze Drug Kingpin’s $60 Million : Cocaine: Secret funds of Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha are uncovered--the biggest strike yet in the war against traffickers.

WASHINGTON —  In the first international crackdown of its kind, authorities in five countries have frozen bank accounts holding at least $60 million belonging to one of the most-wanted members of a major Colombian cocaine cartel, a U.S. official disclosed Tuesday.

Sources said the accounts were controlled by Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a leading member of the Medellin cartel and one of the “dirty dozen” traffickers whose apprehension has been given top priority by U.S. authorities.

The uncovering of the secret European accounts marks the most significant strike against a cocaine kingpin since the Colombian government launched its “all-out war” against the traffickers more than two months ago.

“This is a big, big deal,” a top-ranking anti-drug official said.

The frozen funds represent the contents of “savings accounts” used by Rodriguez Gacha to store “liquid assets” from narcotics trafficking proceeds, the sources said.

The operation was launched 10 days ago on the basis of intelligence provided by the Colombian government, the acting deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terrence L. Burke, told a congressional committee.

Burke refused in his testimony to name either the kingpin or the foreign countries involved in the operation, saying the agency hopes to use new evidence to track down as many as four other suspicious accounts in two additional nations.

Another senior DEA official said the agency has “every reason to believe” that the trafficker did not know as of Tuesday night that his bank accounts had been frozen. Three sources identified the target as Rodriguez Gacha, who uses the nickname “El Mexicano” and has been indicted on cocaine trafficking charges six times in the United States.

Despite concerns that discussion of the operation might cause such details to leak out, the DEA decided to “blow the lid” on the crackdown in order to put pressure on foreign countries to assist with the U.S. request for help in the financial probe, officials said.

The United States has the power under current law to indict and impose massive fines on foreign banks that knowingly accept deposits of drug trafficking proceeds in U.S. dollars. While some European nations proved “extremely helpful” in freezing the suspicious accounts, two others were said to have been less than enthusiastic about the operation.

“The message is: If you want to do business in U.S. dollars, you had better know your customers,” said David Wilson, the agency’s chief financial officer.

The $60 million in drug-related funds that the United States urged be frozen in the foreign bank accounts could be permanently seized only by the country holding the funds. Burke, the deputy DEA administrator, said there was no indication that any of the trafficker’s funds had been deposited in U.S. banks.

While the United States has seized larger sums of money in past bank account raids, officials said the ongoing operation was unprecedented largely because of the degree of international cooperation on which it was founded.

Sources familiar with the case said the information about the bank deposits was uncovered by Colombian authorities during raids on properties owned by Rodriguez Gacha and later turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The CIA played a key role in tracking down the bank accounts that sheltered Rodriguez Gacha’s assets, the sources said.

Authorities were pleased that they had found what appeared to be actual personal savings by a drug kingpin.

“We may in fact be into the man’s financial portfolio rather than simply the channels his organization uses to launder drug profits,” said Wilson, the senior DEA official.

Rodriguez Gacha, 42, is among the most notorious of the Colombian traffickers and ranks high on the list of 12 traffickers whom Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said the United States most wants to see extradited to the United States.

While six traffickers have been extradited as part of the Colombian crackdown, none of them ranked among this “dirty dozen.” In frustration, the Colombian government has devoted much of its attention to efforts to capture or kill Rodriguez Gacha and another trafficker, Pablo Escobar. The reward for information leading to the capture of either man was recently boosted from $250,000 to $625,000.

Rodriguez Gacha is believed to have been behind the Aug. 18 assassination of Sen. Luis Carlos Galan, a charismatic presidential candidate whose slaying provoked the current government backlash.

Infatuated with Mexican culture, “El Mexicano” was prominent in the cutthroat world of emerald dealing before becoming a drug trafficker.

As a leading member of the Medellin cartel, he now heads an international cocaine production and distribution organization based in Bogota that the Justice Department believes to be responsible for sending hundreds of kilograms of cocaine to the United States every week.

The six indictments against him were handed down by federal courts in Miami, Jacksonville, Fla., Brooklyn and Manhattan. The charges range from possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, to racketeering conspiracy involving processing and distributing cocaine, to smuggling heroin.