Colombian Emerald Czar Carranza Dies of Cancer Aged 77
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Victor Carranza, who fought off Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cocaine cartel, Marxist rebels and rival traders, to achieve a near-monopoly of Colombia’s emerald trade, died of cancer at the age of 77.
The man Colombian newspapers referred to as “the emerald Czar,” died at the Santa Fe de Bogota Foundation, according to the hospital’s communications department.