“Primo”, the police buchón who delivered drug traffickers and resold drugs seized during operations

José Victor Gutiérrez (41) is not a big drug dealer. Neither the leader of a gang nor a powerful commissioner. “Primo” or “Negro”, as he is called, is a “police informant” … but not just anyone.

His task was to deliver drug traffickers to his friends in the Buenos Aires police. And in this profession, he was multifaceted: either he could participate in police extortion (“you pay me and I will not arm the cause”) or he was in charge of taking part in the seized goods (marijuana and cocaine) and contact the rival gangs to sell you the drug at a tempting price.

Over the past decade, “Primo” has worked side by side with officers from the San Martín anti-narcotics delegation and then transferred his skills to the San Isidro anti-drug delegation of the Buenos Aires police.

Sometimes himself he put on an official vest and took part in operations as a member of the brigade.

Gutiérrez isn’t a big hit, but he’s someone who knows a lot about how Buenos Aires creates causes for their own benefit. This is why he is one of the main fugitives from a cause which – since it exploded in mid-2020 – has shaken the courts of San Isidro.

The police officers for whom “Primo” worked are the same as the federal judge of San Isidro Sandra Arroyo Salgado and the prosecutor Fernando Domínguez reported as responsible for a mechanism of case creation, drug theft and even crime.

Many of them are already in prison, but the same is not true of the magistrates appointed as leaders and accomplices. On the one hand, the public prosecutor of San Isidro Claudio Scapolan (50) He testified on March 4, after five adjournments, but he remains free thanks to his privileges.

Although on March 18 prosecutor Dominguez requested his prosecution as the leader of the gang, Arroyo Salgado has yet to resolve. In the prosecutor’s investigation, Scapolan’s secretaries, Gustavo Sanvitale and Maximiliano Jarich, appear as his main sides.

For this reason, in the 556-page judgment against Scapolan, Domínguez provides data in order to reverse the “lack of merit” pronounced by the Federal Chamber of San Martín in favor of the two paralegals, who were therefore released from prison.

For the moment, the two secretaries have returned to the charge and divided the tasks: April 22 one arrested prosecutor Domínguez and the other judge Arroyo Salgado. The argument: bias.

The role of “Primo”

The memoirs recall that Gutiérrez’s first significant appearance dates back to 2011 in a cause known as “Pacheco”, which had been “worked on” by the San Martín Anti-Drug Delegation.

There, Gutiérrez acted as a false witness for his friend, the policeman Oscar Antonio Caviglia, who years later – as deputy commissioner of the delegation of illegal drugs of San Isidro – would take him to work with him in another jurisdiction. , controlled by the prosecutor. Claudio Scapolan.

The dubious role of the police in general, and of Gutiérrez in particular, led Karina Pacheco’s lawyer, Damian Odetti (now plaintiff in the Scapolan case) to denounce them.

As evidence, Odetti presented a home recording made by the Pacheco in which he heard how the police asked him 50,000 pesos to take away the drugs and stop everything as “possession for personal consumption”.

Karina Pacheco was fired (the case never ended) and the police officers denounced signed an abbreviated trial in the Federal Oral Court 3 of San Martín. They were given a lesser sentence but at least they had to admit the crime.

As for Gutiérrez, he reappeared in the so-called “Bustamante” case, a file that included raids on four suspected “drug traffickers”.

In this case, Gutiérrez was not in any of the minutes, but he was called to testify as a witness at the oral trial because his participation transcended. The case was eventually overturned in TOF 5 in San Martín because the judges ruled that “Primo” had not only participated in the operations (without being a police officer) but had even done all the work.

By accusing the prosecutor Scapolan, Dominguez took up this case and discovered that the role of “Primo” had been fundamental: he had taken the drug from the raids which had tested “positive” to plant it in those who had tested “negative. “. The reason: have the means to extort money from drug traffickers in order to obtain it.

Finally, before the Federal Court 2 of San Martín, in charge of Judge Alicia Vence, the Gil case was initiated, to investigate the acts of corruption of the police officers under the assumption that they had set up a real company illegal pillaging drug traffickers, obtaining money against them with threats and selling their drugs to other players in the drug market.

The Gil file has now become the heart of the Scapolan affair. Wiretapping and testimonies of repentants complicate the judicial part of the organization. Among the repentants are Gutiérrez and also the police officer Gabriel Cabral, second lieutenant of the Illegal Drugs Delegation of San Isidro.

Listen and correct

The clearest wiretap that illustrates police and court cases is the one that, in December 2014, took “Primo” to talking to drug lord Ceferino Benítez offers him the drugs seized during a raid at the same time as Gutiérrez is with the police in this operation.

This audio was not only used in the case against Benítez but also in the case of Gil against the police gang.

-Cousin: What are you doing old man, why don’t you have the phone?

-Ceferino: I don’t know, he died. I have both phones turned off. Now I turned it on.

-Primo: Listen to me, there we did a job with people and I have seven kilos of green. Does it serve you?

-Ceferino: Yes, yes.

-Cousin: I’m going to leave three, is it good for you?

-Ceferino: Yes, yes yes. but it’s not the same, like the other, right?

-Cousin: No no, the best, the best. I will leave very lucas, is this working for you?

The Gil case was a Pandora’s box. To begin with, it was discovered that 70% of the listening CDs taken by the AFI were lost. And that’s not surprising since they were going to pick them up at the Buenos Aires Police Intelligence Agency itself. No one listened to the rest of the CDs, the remaining 30%: until the start of the Scapolan affair.

On May 21, 2018, Gutiérrez was convicted in the Gil case for the TOF 2 of San Martín. They imposed a lesser sentence on him (three years in prison with a suspended sentence) for belonging to an illicit association made up of police officers.

He got it cheaply because his repentant testimonies favored him. Maybe he believed there was it. He was released almost immediately and his trail was lost.

Now they are looking for him as part of the Scapolan cause. But this record stings higher than the previous ones. Maybe that’s why “Cousin” prefers to stay hidden.

GL