How Paraguay became the center of operations for international organized crime

A prosecutor shot dead by gunmen while spending his honeymoon in Colombia, the mayor of a border town with Brazil gunned down at the doors of his office. The action of organized crime shocks Paraguaya country under threat.

“Organized crime pays politicians, pays parliamentarians, pays the Prosecutor’s Office, the Judiciary and the different authorities,” recently protested with a certain impotence the president Mario Abdo Benitez.

LOOK: Marcelo Pecci: Who was the Paraguayan prosecutor killed by assassins during his honeymoon in Colombia?

The president echoed the citizen commotion left by the murder of the anti-drug prosecutor Marcelo Pucci, 45 years old, on May 10 in Colombia. And death a week after the mayor Joseph Carlos Acevedoof 51, in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero.

This undated photo obtained on May 10, 2022 from the Paraguayan Public Ministry shows Paraguayan anti-drug prosecutor Marcelo Pecci. (AFP). (HANDOUT/)

Days before his assassination, The mayor had criticized bitterly that the gangsters “are armed and nobody does anything. How can they walk down the street armed with AR-15s or AK-47s? (…) We know a lot. Citizens know what is happening here and the Police don’t know, the Prosecutor’s Office doesn’t know”.

LOOK: Murder of Marcelo Pecci: they reveal video of the alleged criminals renting jet skis

Prosecutor Pecci accumulated evidence in proceedings on captured criminals belonging to the criminal organizations of Brazilian origin Primeiro Comando Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), as well as the Lebanese money launderers of the Triple Border with Brazil and Argentina.

Three of the latter were sentenced to extradition to the United States, accused of injecting capital into the Shiite armed movement Hezbollah.

Brazilian bosses

In 2017, the “drug baron” was extradited to Brazil Jarvis Ximenes Pavaowho lived in a special luxury cell -with a Jacuzzi included- in the main prison of Asunción before being transferred to his country.

A year earlier, in 2016, in a gang war, Brazilian-Lebanese Jorge Rafat, leader of drug trafficking, was shot dead on a central street in Pedro Juan Caballero.

José Carlos Acevedo was mayor of Pedro Juan Caballero, in Paraguay. (@JCAcevedoPJC).

LOOK: Murder of Marcelo Pecci: the video of how they reacted on the beach minutes after the crime and his wife’s gesture

But the scariest of all, Sergio de Arruda Quintiliano Neto, alias “Minotauro”, accused as a leader of the PCC on the Paraguayan-Brazilian border, was captured in his department of Camboriú in 2019 in a procedure conducted by Pecci.

One of the lines of investigation of Pecci’s murder points to the Minotaur.

Carlos Alberto de Lima Da Silva, alias “Cascao”, one of the leaders of the Comando Vermelho criminal group, which operates from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, was also captured and handed over to the Brazilian authorities in 2019.

In this file photo taken on December 27, 2009, Paraguayan Carlos Antonio Caballero (left), alias “Capilo,” the leader of an arms and drug trafficking organization, and Brazilian drug trafficker Jarvis Ximenes Pavao (right), two of the most wanted.

Open skies

Criminologist Juan Martens warns that Paraguaytraditionally producer of marijuana, it has also become a drug distributor country.

“We have become the regional distribution center for Andean cocaine. From Paraguaythe consignments are sent through the ports of Buenos Aires and Montevideo to Europe”, he told AFP, explaining that the phenomenon occurs “because the sky is open. There is no control”.

Currently, Congress is studying the approval of some form of aerial control and closure, while the military demands technological equipment, such as radars and aircraft.

The country, with an area of ​​406,000 square km, in which barely 7.3 million inhabitants live, “it is located in a strategic region for smuggling and drug trafficking operations”, highlighted Arnaldo Giuzzio, former anti-drug chief and former Minister of the Interior.

It is “an island of land for traffickers from Colombia, Bolivia and especially Argentina and Brazil,” he said.

border homicides

The anti-drug police burned 600 tons of marijuana last week alone, after eight days of campaign, near Pedro Juan Caballero. 86 drug packing camps were dismantled and 183 hectares of plantations were eliminated, according to Francisco Ayala, spokesman for the Anti-Drug Secretariat.

The official estimated that 80% of the drug produced in that region goes to Brazil through the CV and the PCC.

Reflection of drug trafficking, the homicide rate in the department of Amambay, on the border with Brazil and whose capital is Pedro Juan Caballero, was in 2020 more than 70 per 100,000 inhabitants, ten times more than the national averageaccording to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.

So far this year, the anti-drug police have destroyed 1,022 hectares of marijuana and seized 362 tons of the drug prepared for sale. “These actions allowed a total of 3,428 tons of marijuana to be taken out of circulation, causing a blow worth almost 103 million dollars to drug traffickers,” Ayala told AFP.

In addition, 2,249 kilos of cocaine, valued at 15.7 million dollars, were confiscated.

Source: Elcomercio