Roberto Suarez Gomez ("King of Cocaine"), 68
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himself the ``King of Cocaine'' and claimed to be the model for a character in
the movie ``Scarface,'' has died from a heart attack, his family said. He was
68.
Suarez, who died in the city of Santa Cruz on Thursday night, was released from
prison in 1996 after serving almost nine years for drug crimes.
By his death, most of his vast fortune had dissipated and the one-time drug
lord said he was repentant.
Suarez played a major role in the expansion of cocaine trafficking in Bolivia,
and gained notoriety in 1983 when he offered to pay the country's foreign debt
of $3 billion with proceeds from cocaine trafficking.
Suarez was born into a prominent ranching family in the tropical Beni region.
He became involved in cocaine trafficking in the mid-1970s and early-1980s - a
time when the cocaine trade in Bolivia had taken off. In recent years, the
government has made significant inroads in destroying coca leaf, which is used
to produce the drug.
Suarez said he became a millionaire seven months after going into the cocaine
business, and the money kept pouring in. He later said he had accumulated $40
million from cocaine.
Suarez was also one of its main supporters of a military regime that held power
from 1980 to 1982, and he helped finance it.
During a prison interview with The Associated Press in 1998, he said one of his
dreams was to become a Hollywood actor. He often bragged that he had been the
model for a drug trafficker in the 1983 film ``Scarface'' starring Al Pacino,
the saga of a Cuban refugee who becomes a cocaine kingpin in the United States.
Suarez's downfall came in 1988 when he was sentenced to 15 years for drug
crimes. He was released early, in 1996.
His nephew, Jorge Roca Suarez, took over the drug business, and was arrested
several years ago in the United States, where he is serving a long sentence for
trafficking cocaine.
Suarez claimed to have found faith in prison, and often posed next to a poster
of Jesus Christ that hung on his jail wall.
In a TV interview weeks before his death, he expressed remorse about his life
of crime.
``The worst mistake I ever made in my life was to have gotten involved in
cocaine trafficking,'' Suarez told the local TV station.
Suarez's lawyer, Maria Teresa Montano, said he had 18 children from several
different wives. His last wife deserted him some time ago.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.