Information gathered from slain Colombian rebel leader Raúl Reyes' computer led police to a home in Costa Rica last week where they found a safe with $480,000 believed to belong to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

No arrests were made during the raid on the house in Heredia, just north of San José, and no charges were pending against the couple who resided there, the Associated Press reported.

Francisco Gutiérrez, a university professor who heads an international doctoral program, and his wife Cruz Prado, also an academic and former union activist, agreed to store the safe in 1997, telling reporters last Tuesday that Reyes and another FARC leader, Rodrigo Granda, had visited their home using false names and posing as negotiators for peace in the Colombian conflict, according to AP. The couple said they were led to believe the Colombians were in Costa Rica to speak to representatives of the U.S. State Department.

The couple insisted they had no idea the safe contained $480,000 until authorities seized the money on March 14, and Prado said she believed it only contained documents.

“They (Reyes and Granda) stayed with us several days,” Prado said, according to AP. “Later, he (Reyes) asked us if a third person could leave something at our house and we said yes.”

She was also shocked, she said, upon the discovery of her guests' real identity in 2004. “We were very scared to see who we had been dealing with, but this (box) wasn't ours and we couldn't get rid of it, so we didn't tell anyone,” AP quoted her saying.

The raid occurred as Colombia has been working with Interpol to uncover ties between the country's 40-year-old rebel group and other nations.

The tip-off on the cash in Costa Rica came from an e-mail correspondence allegedly between Granda, FARC's international relations man believed to be living in Cuba, and Reyes, the guerrilla group's No. 2 in command who was killed along with at least 20 of his soldiers on March 1 when Colombian troops attacked a rebel camp just inside Ecuadorean territory, sparking a regional crisis. Colombia's military came into possession of three FARC computers found at the camp.

-Tico Times