'El Gato', the Venezuelan spy in Colombia who pretended to be football coach

Over the past few days, authorities confirmed the Venezuelan spy, Jeiker Valencia Sánchez, known as the alias of 'El gato', who was discovered for posing as a football coach and deported in Antioquia's Urabá.

Colombia has been alerted to the possible presence of Venezuelan spies in the national territory since last year. The Casla Institute reported that nearly 200 agents of Venezuela's General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence would be in the country in order to seek information and sabotage the government of President Iván Duque.

Authorities' records indicate that 'El Gato' entered Colombia in 2018. From that moment on, he was in Córdoba, Bogotá, Norte de Santander and the eastern plains, however, his espionage activities were carried out from Urabá.

According to statements to Noticias RCN, intelligence members in Colombia, the man was posing as a football coach in order to enter the facilities of the Army and National Police, to take photographs, which were discovered at the time of his arrest.

After the revelation of these images, it became known that the Venezuelan spy was posing in military counterintelligence garments from Caracas. In addition, it was discovered that the subject was trained in Cuba and that he had training in explosives.

When the photographs were recovered, the Venezuelan citizen was deported at the border crossing in Villa del Rosario. However, the authorities said that the investigation will continue, given that it is estimated that there could be two other Venezuelan spies working with this man.

The Attorney General's Office called José Nelson Urrego to trial on charges of concert for aggravated crime, forced displacement and invasion of areas of ecological importance. This was done within the framework of the investigations carried out on the dispossession of land in the Uraba during the armed conflict.

Urrego is precisely pointed out to intimidate landowners and then send third parties to buy them, although they remained in the name of the front men, the real owner was Urrego who used the places as a refuge to flee the authorities.

Regarding Urrego's whereabouts, he is presumed to be in Spain with his family, since after paying a sentence in Panama for money laundering, he arrived in the national territory in 2018, where he is believed to have later taken a flight to the Iberian country.

But this is not the only approach Urrego had with the bars, in the nineties when the Medellín cartel had disappeared, Caleño drug traffickers kept the mafias afloat. Precisely Urrego was singled out with the Cali cartel, but later he was released due to lack of evidence. Although suspicions were constantly raised by José Urrego, who was singled out by several national media outlets as the leader of the cartel when he was captured.

“The last head of the Cali Cartel fell: José Nelson Urrego, one of the richest men in the world, was wanted by the authorities for almost two years” titled the newspaper El Tiempo in 1998.

Urrego is also linked to one of the most scandalous events in national politics, the 8,000 process, a judicial process against the then President of Colombia, Ernesto Samper, on charges of receiving drug trafficking funding for his presidential campaign. Its origin was the discovery of a file with that number in the Cali Prosecutor's Office, which corresponded to a search made at the offices of a Chilean accountant, Guillermo Pallomari, linked to the Cali Cartel.

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