 This operation led to a police incursion into a property of El Mocho in the municipality of Tena, Cundinamarca, where they found connections with Verónica Rivera de Vargas, alias the Queen of Cocaina.Colonel Ramírez's successes against drug cartels brought him to the position of Director of the Colombian Drug Enforcement Unit at the same moment that the political leader Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, a bitter enemy of drug cartels and corruption, was promoted to the position of Minister of Justice by the Presidency of Belisario Betancourt Cuartas (1982–1986).Ramírez and Lara assembled a team to search for connections with drug traffickers and enlisted thirty people, many of them participating in politics, and discovered that the cartels were using several aircraft and legal airports to export illegal drugs to United States and Europe.