Corruption: Judges and prosecutors suspected of having links with drug traffickers

Judgments favorable to drug traffickers and smugglers in exchange for money. The operation entrusted to the federal magistrate of Mendoza with electoral competence, Walter Bento, is no exception before the Argentinian courts: other magistrates and representatives of the public prosecutor’s office have been convicted or are under investigation for acts of corruption or for being presumed leaders of illicit associations linked to drug trafficking. In the coming days, the federal judge of San Isidro Sandra Arroyo Salgado will have to define the procedural situation of the prosecutor Claudio Scapolan. The suspended judicial official was investigated last March, accused of being the head of an illicit association dedicated to stealing drug shipments and extorting money from relatives of drug traffickers .

Like those that happened with Judge Bento, Scapolan was not arrested because he enjoys immunity from arrest under his jurisdiction. In Mendoza, the magistrate’s wife, María Isabel Boiza, has also been charged.

Until July 24 of last year, Scapolan headed the executive branch of criminal investigations in San Isidro. He was in charge of investigating drug trafficking. On that day, the summons of the representative of the prosecution to make a statement of inquiry was made public, but due to a series of challenges and proposals for nullity, he obtained four suspensions of the hearing. He only appeared on the fifth appeal and defended himself with a letter accusing Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado and Federal Prosecutor Fernando Domínguez of having started a “hunt” against him. He denied all “the charges”.

As prosecutor Domínguez explains in the court file, the criminal organization was led by Scapolan and made up of lawyers and commissioners, officers and non-commissioned officers from Buenos Aires. One of the accused lawyers, Gustavo Semorile, who has defended notorious drug traffickers for years, has been on the run since July 24.

One of the illicit acts attributed to the “prosecutor’s gang” is the theft of a shipment of cocaine. He was reportedly left with an estimated amount of 520 to 560 kilograms of the drug, valued at close to US $ 2,800,000.

Another case targeting the legal and political links of traffickers has entered its final stages in the courts of Comodoro Py. Before the Federal Oral Tribunal (TOF) of Buenos Aires n ° 3, the Federal Prosecutor Diego Iglesias, responsible for the Office of the Prosecutor for Drug Abuse (Procunar), and the tax assistant of this addiction Martín Uriona, presented their arguments in the debate where 12 suspects are tried in a mega-case of drug trafficking, known as Operation Sapucay, in which the smuggling of marijuana from Paraguay to the city ​​of Itati was revealed, in Currents.

27 other accused, among whom the former mayor and vice-mayor of Ittatí, Natividad “Roger” Terán and Fabio Aquino, respectively, and one of the alleged drug lords, Federico Marín, alias Morenita, has accepted terms of three to 12 years in prison in an abbreviated trial, which involves acknowledging the charges. In a future trial that will be in charge of a court in Correntino, they will be tried now former federal judge with electoral competence Carlos Soto Dávila and two officials who served as criminal secretaries. The magistrate has resigned, but is still on trial for favoring arrested drug traffickers.

Among the suspects who are on trial in the debate is another of the alleged leaders of the criminal organization, Carlos Bareiro, in the dock. The third boss of the narco gang is, according to court records, Luis Saucedo, said El Gordo. He will be judged in another debate because he could not be arrested until September 2019 in the Paraguayan city of Pilar, as part of an operation led by the National Anti-Drugs Secretariat (Senad) of Paraguay.

In the trial which has entered its final phase, Commissioner Diego Ocampo Alvarenga, the highest authority in the Corrientes police in Itatí, is also on trial when the scandal erupted. Not only were there links between drug traffickers and Corrientes police, but representatives of Argentina’s federal police are also on trial.

“Marijuana trafficking has been naturalized in Itatí. It was a business for both parties, for those who developed drug trafficking activities and also for the police authorities, who obtained an economic advantage in exchange for letting them act, if they were not an obstacle to the functioning of the criminal enterprise and whether the criminal enterprise suffered an accident came to his aid, ”explained Iglesias during the presentation of the arguments of Operation Sapucay.

Investigations against judicial officials have also reached Santa Fe. Venado prosecutor Tuerto Mauro Blanco was arrested last month in connection with an investigation for alleged illicit enrichment, after discovering that the official had a close relationship with two drug traffickers in southern Santa Fe, who allegedly provided him with drugs and information to investigate the causes at the public prosecutor’s office The Prosecution In addition, according to the wiretaps incorporated into the case, they gave him money.

Blanco, 41, was targeted after an investigation by Venado Tuerto’s federal prosecutor, Javier Arzubi Calvo, detected through wiretaps that the judicial official had a relationship with Javier Roldán, a drug trafficker from the southern zone of Santa Fe, which supplied him with narcotics, but also, according to the investigation, provided him with information that helped the AMP official to feed his own causes, such as the illegal possession of weapons.

Federal justice has also confirmed that Blanco has a relationship with Nahuel Novelino, another drug trafficker in prison in Piñero. Blanco is not the only judicial official to have been investigated in Santa Fe. Last August Rosario prosecutors Patricio Serjal and Gustavo Ponce Asahad have been arrested in an investigation related to underground gambling. There are no charges in this dossier of relations with drug traffickers, but in Rosario all illegal avenues ultimately lead to a sustained territorial power in the sale of drugs.

El mes pasado fue condenado a la pena de 15 años de cárcel José Miguel Farfán, un sindicado capo narco que había sido detenido en febrero de 2019 in Bolivia, donde vivía en una de las urbanizaciones residenciales más exclusivas de la ciudad de Santa Cruz de la Mountain chain. He had been a fugitive from Argentina for years, from where he escaped in 2014, after paying bribes to secure a favorable ruling from former Oran judge Raúl Reynoso. It was not the first time that he had done so: in 2007, he had bought the federal judge José Antonio Solá Torino, who for this fact had been expelled and convicted. This magistrate committed suicide in November last year because of his imminent arrest.

End of March 2019, former judge Reynoso was sentenced to 13 years in prison as the head of an illicit association that collected money and obtained goods in exchange for favoring drug traffickers accused by court decisions. Reynoso, in his capacity as federal judge, demanded money or other gifts for the issuance of the resolutions. To do this, he used a structure that he himself set up and organized within the orbit of the federal court that he headed, ”prosecutors Iglesias and Eduardo Villalba argued when they presented the request for elevation in the trial of the investigation against the former magistrate. .

Reynoso spent almost 11 years at the head of the Federal Court of San Román de la Nueva Orán, a hot zone for smuggling and drug trafficking. He was regarded by national politicians as a real drug czar. The lawsuit stated otherwise.