U.S. indicts Colombian drug kingpins' relatives

MIAMI (Reuters) - Authorities indicted six associates of Colombia's Cali drug cartel on Thursday on charges they failed to disclose the assets of two jailed kingpins as set out in a sentencing agreement.

The Department of Justice said the defendants were charged with conspiring to impede an investigation into assets owned by brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, sentenced in Miami in 2006 to 30 years in prison on trafficking charges.

The defendants, all relatives of the brothers, were also charged with making false statements.

In return for an agreement to forfeit $2.1 billion in illegal profits, the U.S. government had agreed not to charge six of the brothers' relatives with money laundering and obstructing justice.

The government also agreed to lift financial sanctions against 28 family members if they forfeited tainted assets, including bank accounts, businesses and luxury homes.

The indictment alleged that the defendants omitted assets from the lists provided to the government and instead continued to benefit from hidden assets.

"These defendants are not just family members of the infamous drug trafficking Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, they are conspirators," Drug Enforcement Administration official Mark Trouville said in a statement.

"They will be held accountable for violating their agreement," he added.

The Rodriguez Orejuelas founded the Cali cartel in the Colombian city of that name and admitted shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States from 1990 through 2002.

Prosecutors said that their empire once controlled 80 percent of the world's cocaine supply.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor, editing by Alan Elsner)