His appearance only exacerbates the conflict. The AUC has admitted that they earn up to 70 percent of their income from drug trafficking. Hutchinson said the administrator of the DEA in its 13 March 2002, Congress that several self-defense groups raise funds through extortion, or protection of the laboratory, in the North and the Centre of Colombia operations. Bibes points out that it is interesting that the of paramilitaries from right, also known as autodefensas self-defence in Colombia, allegedly have strong links with drug trafficking, as well as security forces. According to the DAS classified document cited by Bibes above Colombia to the paramilitary leader, Carlos Castano, is well known as a drug trafficker.128 Bibes points out that the Farc, with the purpose of selling weapons to drugs and the Caribbean and Panama, has been trying actively to open a corridor in a region of production of crops for the financing of paramilitary groups. Estimates on the amount of funds that the ELN, the FARC and paramilitary groups obtain the drug trade vary widely. On 3 August 2001, the Houston Chronicle quoted Colombian military analyst Alfredo Rangel, in the sense that the benefits of drug currently 48 percent of the Farc’s total revenues, which amounted to almost $180 million annually. According to the Colombian Government estimates, in 1998 revenue of Colombia guerrilla and paramilitary organizations of the drug trade reaches US $551 million.
Others say the figure is higher. Rafael Pardo, by example, explains that the FARC took control of coca crops in Colombia in the second half of the 1990s and boosted their income to more than 600 million dollars a year, what possibly the richest in history insurgent group. According to Bibes, Colombian guerrillas from those interested in illicit drug production and drug trafficking has been focused primarily on the imposition of the coca growers and cocaine production laboratories.