The Prosecutor’s Crime: How Paraguay Became a Drug Trafficking Hub in South America

ROSARIO.- The murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, from the Organized Crime Unit, on the beach of Baru, Colombiauncovered the power that organized crime has gained in recent years, which has more efficient and agile levels of coordination and logistics than the States of the region. Paraguay rapidly transformed, especially during the pandemic, into a logistics node for drug trafficking in South Americafor the benefits provided by the Paraná-Paraguay waterway with the exit to the Atlantic. For a decade, the country has been perforated by increasingly powerful criminal organizations, such as the Brazilian First Capital Command (PCC), whose influence is beginning to reach Argentina.

The minute of silence requested by the President of the Supreme Court of the Nation Horacio Rosatti to honor Pecci at the act against the power of drug trafficking in Rosariowhich one hundred judges carried out on Thursday, demonstrates the concern generated by the homicide of the Paraguayan prosecutor. Crime Exceeds Paraguay’s Domestic Problemswhich shares with Argentina an extensive fluvial border and waterway, key for the agro-export business, but also converted into a new strategic drug trafficking route at the regional level.

The way Pecci’s execution was planned on the beach in Colombia, outside Paraguay -which was carried out by two assassins who have not yet been arrested-, exposed the growing power of organized crime networks to strike with murder in two countries at once.

The crime occurred in final stretch of the electoral campaign in Colombia, where the first round will be on May 29, in the midst of a rarefied climate. In five departments – among them Bolívar, where Cartagena is located, where the crime took place – the Gulf cartel carried out “four days of armed strike”as the strange measure of the criminal group was called, which it took to respond to the extradition to the United States of Darío Antonio Úsuga David, known as “Othniel”. In those days of “protest” a hundred buses and cars were set on firewhich caused a strong commotion along with the threats and six crimes.

The institutional impact of the homicide of the prosecutor in Paraguay is devastatingbecause it demonstrates how criminal organizations can not only perforate politics with high levels of corruption, but also eliminate those who oppose it, such as the prosecutor. Organized Crime Fighting Unit.

Pecci had permanent contact with Argentine prosecutors and judges and journalists who investigate drug trafficking. had been transformed into a key bishop in the fight against organized crime from being an important link in the investigations of specialized North American agencies, such as the DEAwhich considers that country as the platform for operations of transnational drug groupswhich today operate with increasingly sophisticated networks.

Pecci had a leading role in the operation called A Ultranza PYan investigation into a criminal network of cocaine smuggling between Paraguay and Europe, and that involves politicians, members of the Army and business elites. The case was just beginning, but it crystallized the high level of penetration of organized crime, not only in the State, but also in the economy, by use export firms as fronts to traffic cocaine.

The prosecutor, with the help of the DEA and Europol, detected that this organization, which included businessmen who were suppliers to the Paraguayan State, had laundered more than 250 million dollars. The drug trafficking route that was established confirmed that Paraguay shaped its traditional matrix of marijuana producer -in the central and northern part of the country are the most important illegal crops in South America- to become a logistics node for the provision of cocaine, from Peru and Bolivia, to Europe and Asia.

The impact of the operation A Ultranza PY was strong in Paraguay, because there were indications that this drug laundering network had links with the State. The repercussions of this cause also provoked a shock in the structure of this organization.

On September 12, businessman Mauricio Schwartzman, who was one of the cogs in this gang, was executed in a BMW, linked to Alberto Koube, owner of the company Tapiracuai SA, a major supplier to the State.

The tip of the skein of this network emerged after three shipments were seized in February last year, with a total of 27 tons of cocaine, in Antwerp, Belgium, and Hamburg, Germany. One of the shipments with 16,174 kilos of narcotics transshipped at the port of Buenos Aires.

The discovery came after European security forces managed to hack more than 170,000 messages from phones using the encrypted Sky ECC system. The drug was never detected in the port of origin, in Paraguay.

“Cocaine moves in containers. They leave the legal ports of Paraguay and go through the waterway to reach different parts of the world. There are no controls on the river due to a contradiction in the system itself. If there are more controls, container traffic is complicated and, as a consequence, trade is delayed. It is part of the system”, specialist Carlos Peris, who participated in a study in the region on organized crime carried out by the international NGO Insight Crime, explained to LA NACION.

“The waterway, being the only channel to connect internationally, is the path not only for legal trade, but also for drug trafficking. The gaze in Paraguay is focused on minor contraband, on the boats that pass from Clorinda, Formosa, to Asunción, with bags of sugar, tomato, and cleaning supplies. That is the control on the waterway from the Paraguayan side. The barges are not controlled to speed up the free circulation of the rivers”, he pointed.

Pecci’s crime caused stupor in the Paraguayan Justice. Because, as three prosecutors pointed out to LA NACION, Pecci’s execution is a message to all those who wanted to thoroughly investigate the mafiasdrug trafficking and corruption, which are not many today in that country.

Although there are still no certainties about who could have financed the prosecutor’s execution, this fact confirms the vertiginous changes that Paraguay had in recent years in terms of organized crime.

Until the pandemic, the main problem Paraguay faced was the penetration of major Brazilian gangs, such as Primer Comando Capital and Comando Vemelhowho more than a decade and a half ago settled on the border of Peter John Knightwhere most of the marijuana plantations are.

The growth of PCC and CV was vertiginous and was exposed with episodes of extreme violencelike the crime with an army of hitmen against Jorge Rafaat Toumani in 2016 in the heart of the city. He was shot with more than 400 .50-caliber shells, which are used for anti-aircraft rifles.

In October 2020, the Paraguayan prosecutor led a raid on a hangar near Asunción where they searched for aircraft that transported cocaine from Bolivia to Paraguay, which was then “exported” to Europe. In that operation, the official ran into a helicopter plotted as if it were from the Police of the province of Buenos Aires.

A hypothesis that circulated in Colombia days after the attack against Pecci was that the crime could have been plotted in a prison in the United States where Nader Mohamad Farhat has been imprisoned since last yearlinked to the group Hezbollah and a washing network at the triple border.

Farhat is a member of the “Hijazi” network. Last August, the Paraguayan prosecutor detained members of this group which, in that obscure area of ​​the border, has a Structure with “the capacity to launder hundreds of millions of dollars” from drug trafficking.