Crime DNA: the year Argentina became Sinaloa

The massacre of General Rodríguez revealed that Argentina was the world’s largest supplier of ephedrine to the Sinaloa cartel, who used this chemical precursor to make methamphetamine. Although one of the victims was a major contributor to the Front for Victory campaign, there was never any special impetus to investigate who ordered the massacre in August 2008.

The murders of Sebastián Forza, Damián Ferrón and Leopoldo Bina they would not have materialized if the murderers had not had the collaboration of certain members of the security forces, according to one of the judges when the conviction against the brothers was founded Martín and Cristian Lanatta and Víctor and Marcelo Schillacci.

During the investigation into the triple crime, it was determined that at this time Argentina was the world’s second largest buyer of ephedrine. Between 1999 and 2010, 55,395 kilograms of ephedrine were imported, while the local pharmaceutical industry required 100 kilograms per year for the production of influenza and decongestants. Each tablet of these drugs contains a microdose of ephedrine, therefore, the amount required by laboratories was much less than imported.

The judge determined that of those 55,395 kilograms, at least 40,000 kilograms of ephedrine had been returned to the Mexican drug cartels, primarily the Sinaloa organization.

According to witnesses who testified at the triple murder trial, Argentinian traffickers bought a kilogram of ephedrine for $ 90 or $ 120 and sold it to Mexican drug dealers for $ 10,000. This meant a movement of $ 392,000,000 over eleven years to sell 40,000 kilograms of ephedrine to Mexican cartels. Three Kirchner government officials have been prosecuted for ephedrine trafficking, two of whom had access to an office at Casa Rosada. The FPV administration has always detached itself from the accused.

Campaign controls

However, several documents they proved that Forza had deposited four checks from his Seacamp pharmacy, to Banco Nación account no.5270993, owned by the Frente para la Victoria (FPV). These four documents of $ 50,000 each were issued despite the fact that Forza was prevented from having far exceeded the maximum number of bad checks allowed to conduct a business. No central bank official at the time could explain why Forza continued to issue checks. Interestingly, none of the four checks for $ 50,000 signed by Forza on October 29, 2007 was rejected and the money reached the coffers of the FPV campaign committee.

Relatives of Forza indicated that the businessman, who for the amount deposited became one of the biggest backers of the party that led Cristina Kirchner to the presidency, made a similar contribution because he had the ‘intention to collect the debt for the drugs sold to the French hospital and that it was included in the bankruptcy. This hospital had intervened by the Ministry of Health and an official appointed by the executive branch would decide who was paid. And Forza helped the FPV election campaign to collect the bills.

“Between 2007 and 2008, the acquisition of a pharmacy or a parapharmacy allowed some opportunists a rapid rise in the social ladder, so that the owners of these companies, their employees or people related to this sector were devoted to the sale of ephedrine, a substance of plant origin of ephedra, imported into the so-called “ cuñetes ” of India or China, since our country does not cultivate it, which was legally used for to manufacture decongestants or bronchodilators and whose value on the local market varied between the years 90 and 90, 120 dollars. However, in the illegal market, where the main buyer was Mexico, this chemical precursor was used to make synthetic or synthetic drugs, such as ecstasy; the Mexican cartels, already with the manufactured product, intended it primarily for the United States, paying up to 10,000 dollars per kilo, so it was an extraordinary affair for their owners, ”described Mercedes judge María Graciela Larroque , in the grounds for the conviction for the homicides of Forza, Ferrón and Bina.

Forza had been denounced by several laboratories for falsifying anti-cancer drugs. Although he was never detained for the production of apocryphal remedies, Forza saw the opportunity that presented itself at the time with the purchase of pharmacies that had permission to import ephedrine. Cristian Heredia, Bina’s friend, provided the contacts to collect the precursor chemical.

A cold trap

On August 7, 2008, when Forza, Ferrón and Bina were kidnapped, Heredia had to attend a meeting with them at the bar of the gas station located in Sarandí, in the premises of a shopping center. This meeting would serve to seal an agreement between Forza, Ferrón and Bina with a Mexican buyer.

The victims did not know it but were heading for a trap designed by the main supplier of the delegate of the Sinaloa cartel in Argentina, which did not accept competitors. Heredia did not attend the meeting and saved her life, miraculously.

After six days of searching, the three bodies were found in a ditch of General Rodríguez. Faced with the public shock caused by the triple homicide, the commissioner general who commanded the police of Buenos Aires went to the scene and, in front of the journalists who were behind the perimeter fixed by the experts of the scientific police, affirmed that Forza, Ferrón and Bina were assassinated there and they were before the main scene of the massacre.

Juan Ignacio Bidone, the attorney for Mercedes Complex Investigations, took charge of the investigation and, after analyzing the results of the histopathological studies and the conclusions of the autopsies, warned that the bodies of the victims were exposed to the cold, which delayed the process of cadaverization. Based on this scientific data, the prosecution official began to reconstruct the route of the victims’ cell phones and determined that they were at the Lanatta house in Quilmes, near where the victims were seen. alive for the last time.

“The real motive for multiple homicide was ephedrine. Our territory was fertile ground for colonization by Mexican cartels, who sent their “viceroys”, among them, Jesús Martínez Espinosa, who had a close relationship with Marcelo Tarzia, responsible for his affairs in Argentina, and Ibar Pérez Corradi “, said one of the magistrates in the verdict against the Lanatta and Schillaci brothers.

Pérez Corradi was a fugitive for six years. He was arrested in June 2016 in Foz de Iguazú. Although the former SIDE knows that Pérez Corradi had taken refuge in the area of ​​the triple border, nothing was done to stop him.

While Martínez Espinosa, who set up the methamphetamine laboratory that exploded in Ingeniero Maschwitz, was never convicted of the triple homicide. For Justice, he was responsible for the ephedrine trafficking and sentenced him to 14 years in prison.

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