The founder of the drug gang “Los Monos”, Máximo “El Viejo” Cantero, and 21 others detained as accused of committing shootings and extortion in 2021 in Rosario were transferred this Tuesday under a strong security operation to the Criminal Justice Center of that city to be subjected to an impeachment hearing in which their preventive prisons will be resolved, police and judicial sources reported.
Following the arrests made last week, The members of the gang were housed in the provincial Federal Penitence Unit, located on Calle 27 de Febrero al 7,000, in the southern area of Rosario, and from there they were transferred this morning to the Criminal Justice Center of Rosario for the hearing convened for this Wednesday.
Due to the dangerous nature of the defendants, among whom is “El Viejo” Cantero, founder of the organization and father of the current leader of “Los Monos”, Ariel “Guille” Cantero, nearly 100 troops and a dozen cell phones were summoned. of the local Penitentiary Servicel, in addition to police officers from Santa Fe, to guard the transfers.
“The 22 detainees were taken to the Criminal Justice Center and since 6 this morning they are waiting for the start of the hearing,” the secretary of the Penitentiary Service, Walter Gálvez, told the local press.
The arrested are accused of forming an illegal association dedicated to committing intimidating shootings and extortion, in addition to attempted homicides, during 2021 in Rosario.
The investigation is in charge of prosecutors Valeria Haurigot and Franco Carbone, who arrested the suspects andn 29 raids carried out days ago in different homes in Rosario, among them that of “El Viejo” Cantero (58), who was located in his home located in Avellaneda at 4,500, in the southern part of the city.
The prosecutor in the case had then announced that at the impeachment hearing they were going to accuse the detainees of “public intimidation, extortion, attempted murder, illicit association, among others” and that they would ask for preventive detention.
The prosecutors specified that the organization has been investigated since November of last year for a succession of shooting attacks against businesses, schools and service stations.
“The basis of our investigation is extremely solid and it is the structure of ‘Los Monos’; one gave the orders and someone paid a price for these public intimidations to be carried out for various reasons,” the prosecutor said at a press conference after the arrests.
When qualifying as “Treachery and extreme” the violence with which criminal gangs operate in RosarioHaurigot said that three of its members involved in the ongoing investigation “operated while detained in penitentiary centers in the province.”
For his part, prosecutor Carbone reported that although no weapons were found in “El Viejo” Cantero’s house, “an accumulation of evidence and indications” was found that could open other lines of investigation “also criminal.”
