Gerardo Reyes

In the middle of the year, Univision Investiga released an unknown episode in life of Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio, presidential candidate for the 2016 elections. Reyes found documents showing that in 1987 the US government confiscated the house in Miami of Barbara Rubio, the politician's sister and her husband Orlando Cicilia, as part of a large-scale anti-drug operation against an organization that imported and distributed cocaine and marijuana in South Florida.

The team received the Emmy Award for Best Investigation in 2013 for the special "El Chapo Guzman, the Eternal Fugitive", the life and adventures of drug trafficker Joaquin El Chapo Guzmán. The documental beat rating records in the history of Univision. In 2015 Reyes and the Univision team were recognized with the Ortega y Gasset Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in the Spanish-speaking world, for an extensive chronicle on how drug trafficking has been taken on the illegal mining business in Latin America. The chronicle was published in Univision.com. The television version received an Emmy in the same year.

Univision Investiga aired in 2012 "Fast and Furious. Arming the Enemy" special, which revealed how the weapons of a covert operation of the US federal government ended up being used in massacres of innocent people in Mexico, committed by drug traffickers.

In 2011 Univision Network, under a new administration by Isaac Lee (CEO News, Entertainment and Digital) and Daniel Coronell (News President) commissioned Reyes to create an investigative unit. The team was initially formed by producer Margarita Rabin and Spanish reporter and producer Tomas Ocaña.

Reyes revealed in 2009 that then-Defense Minister and later president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos directly intervened to prevent annulation of a contract of his best friend Felipe Jaramillo's company, although army officers recommended another company.

Based on judicial records and interviews, he published an article in December 2007 that showed the ties of the father of then-Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Velez with a helicopter seized in 1984 in the raid on Tranquilandia, the largest cocaine processing laboratory in the history of the war against drug trafficking in Colombia.

Reyes was a correspondent and advisor for Semana magazine until 2007. He also advised magazine Gatopardo and collaborated with the magazine Poder. For more than 10 years, he was a jury of the Prize of the Institute of Press (IPYS) and Society for the Best Investigation in Latin America. He is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). He has been a lecturer and professor at several universities in the United States, Latin America and Spain.

In January 2005, under the title "Slaves in Paradise," he started a series that exposed the subhuman conditions of Haitian workers in sugar mills in the Dominican Republic.

In 2003, he covered for El Nuevo Herald and the magazine Semana de Colombia, the trial in Miami against the head of the Medellin cartel, Fabio Ochoa. For his journalistic career and his efforts to integrate Latin American investigative colleagues, Reyes received the Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Award in 2004.

In 2000, having published a manual on investigative journalism, Reyes developed an extensive network of contacts with investigative reporters in Latin America. In one of his trips to Venezuela, with the cooperation of the journalist Luz Mely Reyes, he brought to light the first corruption scandal of the government of President Hugo Chávez: the award of a printing contract of the new Bolivarian constitution to mandatary's collaborators and friends.

Cicilia was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was released in 2000 by reduction of sentence. The senator, who was 16 when the events occurred, refused to talk to reporters seeking an explanation of how that episode influenced his political career and whether his family had benefited from the money of Cicilia. A spokesperson for Rubio called the quest for reaction as something outrageous to sensational journalism.

In 1998 he participated in The Miami Herald's team which received the Pulitzer Prize for the best investigation. The series denounced various forms of corruption in the city's Mayor elections. The Reyes' article of the series found that among the voters there were several people convicted for federal crimes, which should have prevented them from voting.

In 1997, Reyes discovered a secret account of $6 million linked to Nicaraguan Sandinista General Humberto Ortega, brother of the two-time president of that country Daniel Ortega. He also brought to light a plan to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro financed by the powerful Cuban-American Foundation. That same year, he published a report about a group of bankers that, after break in Ecuador, leaving homeless thousands of savers, lived a king's life in Miami. In mid-1997 he covered for El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald the trial of several operators of a cell for the Cali cartel in South Florida.

Together with Gonzalo Guillén, a correspondent for El Nuevo Herald in Bogota, Reyes published other reports that shed light on Uribe Velez's relationship with paramilitarism. One of these reports revealed the testimony of former Colombian paramilitary Francisco Enrique Villaba Hernández, about Uribe and his brother Santiago's involvement in planning a massacre at Aro municipality, Antioquia department, in 1997.

The series received the Hispanic Journalists Association award in 1993 at the Press category. In September 1994, Reyes and his colleague Jeff Leen of The Miami Herald reported that several DEA agents in Colombia had sold Medellin Cartel drug traffickers their diplomatic rights to import cars into that country.

In 1992, he covered the trial of Panamanian General Manuel Antonio Noriega in Miami for El Nuevo Herald and El Tiempo. He also followed the maneuvers of a General of the National Guard of Venezuela to introduce to the United States a ton of cocaine, with the knowledge of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This theme was taken by the show 60 Minutos of CBS. Reyes collaborated with the segment producer, the legendary journalist Lowell Bergman.

In the 1990s, he reported on Colombia's tumultuous presidential elections in the midst of the cartel war against the government. He brought new elements to the scandal of drug money infiltration in President Ernesto Samper's campaign. His work with reporter Evelyn Larubia on the death causes of a Colombian singer, during cosmetic surgery in Miami, led to the arrest of the physician who practiced it.

In 1988 he was hired by the newspaper El Nuevo Herald in Miami, where he worked as sub-editor for the local section and correspondent for Latin America. There he combined his investigative work with chronicles from both Miami and the countries he visited.

Both journalists invited Reyes to work on the team that, for over a decade, uncovered numerous official and financial corruption scandals and was emulated by other newspapers in Colombia and Latin America. As part of this team, Reyes published a series that documented bribes paid by the multinational Ericcson to several telecommunications officials in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia. The series was recognized with the National Grand Prize of Journalism in 1987.

The report revealed unpublished judicial statements of the sister of the murdered Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, in which he remembered that his brother suspected that Uribe was implicated in drug trafficking. A year before, Reyes had published court documents proving an unknown fact: that Uribe Velez had been accused of the crimes of falsification and contraband in connection with the importation of a Turbocomander aircraft in 1983.

He has been dedicated to investigative Journalism since 1978.

Gerardo Reyes Copello graduated from Law School at the Santo Tomas de Aquino University in Bogota. His first incursions into journalism began in 1978, as an investigator of Propúblicos, a Bogota foundation that supervised the work of congressmen in matters of bills, assistance and debates.

Gerardo Reyes Copello (born 1958, Cúcuta, Colombia) is an investigative journalist. He works as director of the investigative unit of Univision Network. He worked at El Nuevo Herald in Miami, Florida. In The Miami Herald, he won a shared Pulitzer prize in 1999.

Gerardo Reyes Copello, born 1958 is a Colombian investigative journalist who leads the investigative team of Univision Network. For more than 30 years, Reyes has devoted himself to investigate corruption schemes in Latin America and the ramifications in the United States of those schemes.