Horacio Cartes in Brasilia, August 2017. Eraldo Peres (AP)
Former Paraguay President Horacio Cartes says he is “immensely outraged” by the allegations against one of the main perpetrators of the murder of Paraguayan anti-mafia prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, which took place in Colombia on May 10, 2022. This Friday, Francisco Luis Correa Galeano, one of the confessed participants in the criminal organization, said in a court hearing that he had received orders from Cartes. He also targeted Miguel Insfrán Galeano, alias Tío Rico, the alleged leader of a transnational drug trafficking network who was arrested in Brazil in February this year.
Pecci was Paraguay’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor and was assassinated on the last day of his honeymoon in Colombia. A hitman jumped off a jet ski on a crowded beach in broad daylight, approached him and his pregnant wife and fired. Pecci fell dead on the sand. The crime shocked Colombia and Paraguay. It was also a message to those investigating drug trafficking and money laundering in Latin America.
“Who ordered the murder of the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci?” the prosecutor in this case asked Correa during the trial of Margaret Chacón Zúñiga, accused of murdering him along with two brothers Andrés and Emilio convicted of the crime last May to have hired Pérez Hoyos.
“The murder of Dr. “Marcelo Pecci is a retaliation for the fact that some time ago they had arrested a brother of this Mr. Insfrán Galeano, Tío Rico, and also a great irritation on the part of the former President of Paraguay, Horacio Cartes,” replied Correa, a key prosecution witness. Correa said that the masterminds of the murder were Cartes, a businessman and president of Paraguay between 2013 and 2018, and Miguel Insfrán. “Both the former president and Mr. Tío Rico were the ones who started planning and contacted the Pérez Hoyos brothers and Ms. Margaret to carry out the assassination,” he added.
Marcelo Pecci speaks to the press in Asunción (Paraguay), March 10, 2020.NORBERTO DUARTE (AFP)
“The information came precisely from Paraguay. From the day he got married they gave accurate information and the days he traveled to Cartagena,” Correa told the judge, lawyers and the defendant in a hearing broadcast on YouTube. In doing so, he repeated the version he gave a year ago after his arrest, as the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo published 24 hours before his statement on Friday.
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Pecci was responsible for several of Paraguay’s most important drug trafficking and money laundering cases. One of these was the so-called A Ultranza Py operation, in which fifty people were arrested for international drug trafficking and money laundering. Among them Uncle Rico.
Paraguay is one of the largest marijuana producers in the region and one of the largest cocaine corridors from Bolivia to Europe. In Paraguay, Bolivia is free of radar devices to identify irregular aviation and ground controls along thousands of kilometers of the border and is mixed with illegal chemical raw materials from other countries. It is then hidden in trucks and shipping containers to be transported to Africa and Europe along with coal, soybeans, wheat or corn. According to Paraguay’s National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD), Cape Verde and Rotterdam are the main destination ports.
As soon as Correa’s statement became known, former President Cartes saw himself as the victim of an intrigue. “I am immensely outraged by an unfounded accusation that is clearly motivated by a desire to harm me. I have always had appreciation and admiration for the prosecutor Marcelo Pecci and this terrible lie hurts me for his memory and for his family. “Justice will prove the truth” published on his social networks.
I am immensely outraged by a baseless accusation that is clearly motivated by a desire to harm me. I have always had appreciation and admiration for the prosecutor Marcelo Pecci and it pains me to see his memory and the memory of his family for this terrible lie. Justice will prove the truth.
— Horacio Cartes (@Horacio_Cartes) October 6, 2023
The Colombian authorities are looking for the masterminds of various criminal organizations. In 2022, Colombian police targeted Brazil’s First Capital Command (PCC), another criminal structure Pecci had investigated, as well as Italian mafia groups responsible for smuggling cocaine into Europe. The Paraguayan prosecutor’s office announced that the United States government had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information about the “people who conspired to assassinate the prosecutor,” but there were no responses in Paraguay.
Pedro Ovelar, Cartes’ lawyer, has rejected any hypothesis linking the former president to the crime: “Former President Cartes was never mentioned in this conspiracy. There is no statement linking him to the case,” he told EL PAÍS in a telephone communication. In addition, he added that the murdered prosecutor did not investigate Cartes, his family, companies or the people who arrived. “Everything is happening on the basis of false information that not only misleads journalists but has also managed to anger international intelligence or security agencies,” he added.
For Francisco Bernate, lawyer for the Pecci family in Colombia, Correa’s accusation is “not an insignificant fact.” “Whether it is true or not needs to be clarified. I believe that Colombia has complied with it and it is important that Paraguay also does its part,” he assured. The lawyer added that he considers it clear that Pecci was not killed because of a situation related to the country in which he was murdered and that it is therefore important that the Paraguayan justice system begins its investigation.
For his part, the new Attorney General of the State of Paraguay, Emiliano Rolón, said: “We will be careful and develop the case. “I have to see how it is presented, the Colombian judicial question is crucial.”
Cartes is considered the political godfather of current Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, former manager of Banco Basa, which is owned by the former president’s family. The politician and businessman, owner of opaque accounts in Panama and other tax havens, was declared “significantly corrupt” by the United States last year, in the middle of his party’s internal election campaign, which he wanted to control again against the internal line of the then president: Mario Abdo Benitez.
Cartes, who amended the constitution to allow his re-election after his term expires, is currently leader of the Colorado Party, a party that has ruled Paraguay for 74 years with only one interruption, the government of former Bishop Fernando Lugo between 2008 and 2013.
The former president was under investigation in Brazil because he was linked to the Lava Jato case. And in Mexico and the United States because of his alleged connection to tobacco smuggling. He owns the company Tabacalera del Este SA (Tabesa), which produces dozens of brands of cigarettes that reach almost every corner of America at half the price of the competition. This is mentioned in a 2011 investigation leaked to WikiLeaks, which revealed that the FBI, CIA and other US organizations were plotting to spy on him on behalf of tobacco companies such as Philip Morris, which accused him of unfair competition.
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