The son of a major drug lord will sue Netflix
William Rodriguez, son of the capo Miguel Droguez Orejuela, said Thursday on a local radio that he will launch all necessary legal procedures so that the series, produced by the Colombian TV Caracol Television, is suspended.
According to Mr. Rodriguez, the 60 episodes of the series El Cartel de la Sapos, El origen would be of a total unrealism and would be inspired by the history of the famous Rodriguez Orejuela clan, two powerful godfathers today imprisoned in the United States, and one time rivals of the deceased Pablo Escobar.
This production, broadcast since the beginning of July by the famous streaming platform but which will not be broadcast in Colombia, tells the story of the Villegas (an imaginary name), or the journey of two modest brothers from Cali to become drug lords.
Netflix assures that it is a work of fiction, and that the facts are the fruit of the imagination of the writers. On its website, Caracol Televisión Internacional explains that the series is based on real facts about the leaders of the dreaded Cali cartel.
For Rodriguez son, no doubt, the production has violated his family privacy, and the main protagonist of the series, Wilmer, has obvious similarities with his life. Netflix has commercialized my name, he accused, estimating moreover that the production has plagiarized a large part of one of his books about the Rodriguez Orejuela family. The story has been plagiarized, my book has been plagiarized, he assured, denouncing the profits generated on his name by the broadcasting platform, which is not known to have co-produced the series.
The plaintiff states that he is seeking compensation for all damages and moral prejudice caused by the inventions of this cartoon.
In the wake of the famous Narcos, telling the life of Pablo Escobar and his rivalry with the Cali cartel led by the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, Netflix is releasing this new series on the theme of Colombian drug lords in several countries, including the US and Spain.
Dismantled in the mid-1990s, the Cali Cartel was considered by the United States to be the largest drug trafficking organization in the world after the fall of Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín Cartel and bitter enemy of the Rodriguez Orejuelas.
Gilberto (82) and Miguel (78) were captured in 1995 and extradited a decade later to the United States, where they are serving a 30-year prison sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.