By Wendy Anders

Costa Rican authorities seized US$480,000 as part of an international effort to local and repatriate assets of the now-disbanded Colombian rebel group, FARC.

The Costa Rican Supreme Court of Justice last week turned over the assets of the guerrilla group to the Colombian Attorney General’s Office, reported Bogotá, Colombia’s daily El Espectador newspaper.

This was the first seizure of the FARC’s illicit assets abroad.

The Colombian Attorney General’s Office has been working with judicial authorities in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, the United States, Mexico, Panama and Peru to locate and repatriate FARC assets in those countries for many years.

The FARC’s assets in Costa Rica were seized in 2008, but it wasn’t until Colombia intensified their efforts that the two countries worked out a mechanism to transfer the funds.

“For the Office of the Attorney General, this return is the result of the commitment between the two nations to dismantle criminal gangs and to attack the illegal patrimony of criminal organizations, and reveals the dimension of our commitment in the fight against various forms of transnational organized crime,” says a letter sent by Colombian Attorney General Martínez Neira to his Costa Rican counterpart, Jorge Echavarría.

“We will continue to investigate and prosecute illegal assets of organizations both at home and abroad.” Martínez Neira said.