NJABULO NKOSI

Nelson Pablo Yester-Garrido, also known as "Tony Yester," is a notorious Cuban-born drug kingpin, former intelligence officer, and associate of the Medellín Cartel who infamously operated a global narcotics network from South Africa for nearly two decades. Yester-Garrido immigrated to the United States during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. By the 1990s, he had become deeply entrenched in international drug trafficking. His most infamous plot involved negotiating with Russian contacts to purchase a Soviet-era diesel submarine for Colombian cartels to smuggle massive quantities of cocaine into North America. When US federal authorities uncovered the plot in 1997, Yester-Garrido fled to South Africa using a fraudulent Mexican passport under the name Antonio Lamas. Posing as a wealthy businessman, he settled into Johannesburg’s affluent suburb of Sandton. For years, he lived a high-society lifestyle, associated with local underworld figures like Glenn Agliotti and survived multiple local arrest attempts and collapsing prosecution efforts. In April 2002, heavily armed police and Interpol agents intercepted Yester-Garrido as he drove out of his luxury home in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. Police raided his home, seizing over R1 million worth of luxury cars, $30,000 in cash, and roughly 20 fraudulent passports (including Mexican, Venezuelan, and Cuban identities). He had been living under the alias “Antonio Lamas”. He was held at Pretoria Central Prison while the United States fought to have him extradited for his 1990s cocaine trafficking and submarine plot. A magistrate ruled in 2003 that he could be extradited. However, Yester-Garrido launched aggressive legal counter-challenges in the Johannesburg High Court. Due to political delays, legal technicalities, and the eventual dismissal of his initial US Florida charges, the government never handed him over, and he was released. In March 2011, the Hawks arrested Yester-Garrido at his Sandton home in connection with a massive narcotics seizure. In August 2010, authorities discovered 166kg of high-grade cocaine (worth an estimated R400 million) hidden inside the metal pillars of a shipping container at Gqeberha.

During his arrest, police also charged him with possessing an illegal Desert Eagle handgun. The gun was traced back to Chris Couremetis, a notorious underworld associate known as "Mr. Cocaine," who had been assassinated in a hit just months prior. In 2013, the state abruptly withdrew all charges against Yester-Garrido. Officially, the case stalled because of an unfulfilled Portuguese translation of crucial state documents. A self-styled underworld informant later filed an affidavit claiming that Czech fugitive crime boss Radovan Krejcir had intervened on Yester-Garrido's behalf. The informant alleged that he had personally delivered R700,000 in cash to Port Elizabeth, which was reportedly destined for the team prosecuting Yester-Garrido to ensure the charges were dropped. While these corruption allegations were never proven in court, Yester-Garrido walked free once again. He left South Africa in 2017. He did not leave permanently by choice; rather, he took a trip to Europe, which resulted in his capture because the US government had secretly built a new criminal case against him. In December 2017 he was arrested by Interpol at Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy. Following a lengthy legal battle, Italy extradited him to the United States in July 2019. In August 2020, faced with overwhelming evidence, he pleaded guilty in a Florida federal court to conspiracy to distribute high-grade marijuana, linked to a $250,000 drug debt collection he managed while living in South Africa. In December 2020, he was sentenced to five years in US federal prison. After receiving credit for time served in Italian and American detention facilities, Yester-Garrido was released from a Miami detention centre in January 2022.