Dircabi says that he never had the seized plane under his power; in Paraguay they investigate her for another drug delivery

Three days after the kidnapping in Paraguay of the Cessna Centurion II plane, with Bolivian registration CP-2769, pronounced the director of the General Directorate of RegistrationControl and Administration of Seized Assets (Dircabi), Sergio Espinoza, and He denied having had this aircraft in his possession..

Espinoza said that the seizure process It was carried out by the Eleventh Sentencing Court in Criminal Matters of the Capital without the physical presence of the plane.

He explained that on September 3, 2015, the Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking hijacked a small plane with Peruvian license plate CP-2781 to transport 362.6 kilos of cocaine base paste, which was to be taken from the Madidi park, in the north of La Paz, to the municipality of Roboré, in Santa Cruz.

On that occasion, the then captain of the Bolivian Air Force (FAB), Yimy José Urzagaste Zabala, was apprehended, because according to the investigations, introduced the drug to Bolivia from the Valley of the Apurimac RiversEne and Mantaro (Vraem), in the middle of the Peruvian jungle.

For this act, the former FAB official was sentenced to 20 years in prison and sand linked him to Peruvian cartels that had laboratories of drug crystallization in the north of La Paz, Pando, Beni and Santa Cruz, according to intelligence reports.

However, the investigation did not stop there, since Juan Carlos Escalane Vega was identified as the owner of the aircraft with Peruvian registration CP-2781 and a process was initiated for legitimization of illicit profits. Thus, it was identified that he owned two other aircraft with license plates CP-1642 and CP-2769, which is the one that was hijacked in Paraguay.

Espinoza said that the La Paz Prosecutor’s Office requested the loss of control of the aircraft considering that they were acquired with drug money. It was so on August 10, 2021 the Eleventh Sentencing Court in Criminal Matters of the Capital ordered the seizure in favor of the Bolivian State of the aircraft with registration number CP-2769.

He indicated that this process sand he did it without the presence of the plane, Therefore, the plane was never located and the delivery to the warehouses was not made either. of Dircabi.

“The judge orders the General Command of the Police, the National Directorate of the Felcn, the DGAC and the Bolivian Air Force to proceed with the physical search for these two planes so that they can be handed over later. But they were never in the possession of Dircabi the two aircraft, including the ones in Paraguay”, explained Espinoza.

Investigate another drug delivery

The Police and the Prosecutor’s Office of Paraguay investigate another drug delivery made by the gang that was dismantled with the seizure of the plane with Bolivian license plate CP-2769 with 440 kilos of cocaine on the landing strip called “Takuarembo”, located in the Arazape company, in the city of San Miguel, which belongs to the Paraguayan department of Misiones.

According to the indictment of the Paraguayan Prosecutor’s Office, to which EL DEBER had access, the five apprehended in this operation are: Adolfo Osmar Sanabria Figueredo, 38 years old; Vicente Alcides Sanabria, 49 years old; Héctor Lorenzo González, 30 years old; José Abel Robalino Hakome (pilot), 29 years old; Y Miguel Ángel Garrido Salvatierra (co-pilot), 30 years old. These last two are supposedly Bolivian.

The investigations indicate that this gang of drug traffickers operated for at least eight months using Bolivian planes to load drugs from Peru and take them to Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.

On August 1, 2022, the Paraguayan Police managed to seize 461.76 of cocaine on a clandestine track of the municipality of Juan de Mena of the department of Cordillera. On this occasion, the drug traffickers escaped in a truck and in a small plane with Bolivian registration, which is presumed to be the one that was kidnapped on September 5 in Takuarembo.

In this last case, according to reports from the Paraguayan authorities, the small plane with Bolivian registration number CP-2769 loaded the drug in Peru, then moved to Bolivia to load fuel and then arrived in Paraguaybut this was not the destination, since it had to be taken to Uruguay, where the person who would be the owner of the aircraft resides.

There was another Bolivian plane

When the police search of the aircraft was still being carried out in Takuarembo, another Bolivian plane landed in the place to try to unload another shipment of drugs, but his pilot noticed the operation and immediately left shooting at the agents who were with the five detainees of the first case.

It was thus that the Bolivian pilot José Abel Robalino Hakome was wounded shot and admitted to the Truma Hospital in Asunción.

Hours later, the second plane, which it has the Bolivian flag on the rear fin, was found incinerated in the silo of a former factory in the municipality of San Isidro Labrador de Curuguaty, in the department of Canindeyú.

According to witnesses, a group of subjects unloaded several bags, apparently with controlled substances, and fled on motorcycles, after set the aircraft on fire to leave no clues.