Gerardo Reyes

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.

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.

Besides exposing nexus between politicians and drug trafficking, he has dedicated several of his reports to the study of Latin American magnates and the concentration of the wealth in the region.

His individual and collective works have been recognized with the most prestigious journalism awards in Spanish and English, such as the Pulitzer Prize, Maria Moors Cabot, Peabody Award, three Emmy Awards, IRE for investigations and Ortega y Gasset and Planeta.

"Its subject matter is power in all its expressions: politicians, businessmen, officials and police. But also mafia bosses, murderers and corrupt bureaucrats. Reyes unusually combines investigative rigor with good pen '', wrote Lorenzo Morales in the book "Facts for Telling".

He has been dedicated to investigative Journalism since 1978.

In Bogota, Colombia, he was a member of the revolutionary investigative unit of the newspaper El Tiempo, one of the first teams of this type in the hemisphere.

After moving to The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, he published a series of reports highlighting issues ranging from medical malpractice and electoral fraud to drugs and arms trafficking.

He wrote the first systematic guide in Spanish of investigative journalism methods.

He is co-founder of Journalists and Research Editors, an organization through which he has promoted transnational collaboration among his colleagues.

The Beginnings

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.

The results of this review were published by the prominent journalist Daniel Samper Pizano in the newspaper El Tiempo, and then compiled in two guides for voters.

By that time, Samper founded the investigative unit of El Tiempo, along with Alberto Donadio, an expert lawyer of information access rights.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

During these years, Reyes wrote chronicles that were selected for anthologies of Colombian journalism.

One of them is the story of a Colombian maid who maintained a torrid affair with the great Italian mafia boss in New York Paul Castellano.

He also published the adventures of a Medellin drug trafficker, who left the drug business to become a trappist monk, who was flocking to find a healing miracle.

He also wrote a chronicle about an attractive woman who laundered dollars for the cartels.

This last one was taken to the television in the series "The Butterfly".

In The Miami Herald, he won a shared Pulitzer prize in 1999.

Education

Reyes studied law in Bogotá.

Trajectory