Shortly after Agustín lost his job as head chef in a restaurant in Brazil, his father, Ernesto, He suggested that he start in an industry that —for the various measures taken by the government—, I understood that it was in full development in Uruguay; the medical cannabis industry. “In the newspapers it was read that the government was promoting medical cannabis; and that it was good business”, justified Ernesto in an interview with Coffee & Business.
After evaluating the benefits of his father’s proposal, Agustín enrolled in a course to learn about the work of the hemp plantation and, when he already had enough knowledge, He presented the project to the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MGAP), in which he obtained authorization to plant hemp on a quarter of a hectare of a field in which his family lives, and in which his father has other rural productions.
Then –after an investment of US$ 40,000 to condition the field in which the plantations would be made—, the process was launched: in November the crop was planted, between December and March it was developed and in April they were harvested 150 kg of dried flowers for export. But, in July, the project fell apart.
As Ernesto recalled, one winter day, with the verbal order of Rivera’s prosecutor, Alejandra Domínguez, The Police raided the establishment where the harvest was located —also the home of the entrepreneurs— in a “movie” operation: “Weapons, machine guns… All camouflaged. An impressive thing”He maintained who devised this business.
By the way, the prosecutor said that the decision to search was made because the information to the Prosecutor’s Office that there was a marijuana plantation on that property and because, in addition, an image that supported this information had been captured with aerial filming. “The raid was carried out and 44 bags were found, all packed in such a way that they could apparently be buds“, explained the prosecutor, and assured that despite the fact that the owners of the plantation said that it was hemp, they decided to seize it to analyze each of the bags.
Until then the entrepreneurs were calm. For them, this was nothing more than a misunderstanding that was going to be clarified once the seized bags were analyzed.but it was not like that.
The tests: a process of failures and successes
“Shortly after, the Police came with an arrest warrant on the charge of planting and drug trafficking“recalled Ernesto, and indicated that in the end it did not happen because his lawyer, Hugo Lavecchia, argued that since the entrepreneurs were not present when the samples were taken to carry out the analyzes, they could not be stopped.
Now, why did the prosecutor order an arrest warrant? Because according to the analysis carried out by the Scientific Police from samples of the seized bags, it was all psychoactive cannabisthat is, according to the study, the plantation was not the hemp plantation authorized by the MGAP but was an illegal cultivation of marijuana. This is because the THC level —the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis— had a result greater than 1%, when in medical cannabis it should be less than that percentage.
Agustín and Ernesto repeated, over and over again, that this result could not be real, that something was wrong. To prove it, they decided to do their own studies in the MGAP laboratory. Sacaron eight samples of the bags seized in front of a notary public, and sent to the laboratory, which proved that the samples were hemp, with 0.5% THC.
Asked why eight samples were sent instead of 44, The entrepreneur explained that these analyzes were at his expense and cost US$170 each, and eight was the maximum they could pay.
Raul Martinez / EFE
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This new study, together with the presentation of briefs by the defense of the entrepreneurs in which the existence of each thing that was seized was justified, led to the prosecutor to request a new analysis but, this time, at the Forensic Technical Institute (ITF) which said that of the 44 samples, 42 gave a THC result of less than 1%. As Lavecchia explained, two bags dumped cannabis with a psychoactive component because they were self-cultivated —approved by the Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis (IRCCA)—, from Agustín: “The Police took everything and mixed it in some bags,” he said. .
The lawyer’s position
The tests carried out by the Scientific Police ensured that the contents of the bags were illegally grown psychoactive cannabis. This was refuted because the defendants were able to carry out a new study in the MGAP, for which they had to pay a total of US$1,360.
In this sense, the defense attorney maintained that “If they had not had the economic resources to pay for a laboratory and do their own analysis, which in the end showed that they were making a mistake, they would have ended up formalizing them with pretrial detention.” And he wondered “How would this have ended if the person had not had the resources to redo the studies?”, because it is more than complicated for him to be able to explain to a judge, to which a prosecutor requests the formalization with preventive detention for the alleged commission of a crime related to drug trafficking involving 140 kg of marijuana, which is a hemp plantation and that those involved should not be sent to prison.
The case filed
Prosecutor Domínguez pointed out: “One investigates… Obviously, the case was filed later, and the return was made.”
Asked about the difference in the results of the three analyses, the prosecutor said that it may correspond to the methodology used and that the MGAP and the ITF use the same, which is different from that of the Scientific Police. “If I had been with the scientific police, I would have formalized it because it gave me that they were buds. But one always tries to look for the truth, which is our function”held.
Once it was identified that what was seized did not correspond to an illegal crop, the investigation was closed and the material was returned to the entrepreneursbut according to Ernesto, this one was no longer useful for anything because it had been kept “in a horrible warehouse”.
For his part, Domínguez stated that the material was poorly preserved before it was seized: “A whole scientific survey was carried out. Statements were taken from suitable people who explained how they had to be conditioned and they did not have it that way. They were not conditioned as the experts proposed by the defense explained to us how they had to be“.
The trial to the State
Although the case was closed, The entrepreneurs intend to make a reparation trial to the State: “It’s a long thing, the lawyer already told us, but we don’t want it to stay that way,” he said, and then added: “We spent some horrible months, with one foot in jail.”
The lawyer explained that the basis of this judgment is the responsibility of the State for the malfunctioning of the serviceboth the police service and the prosecutor’s office when ordering the seizure of the product and “not to mention” in the custody of the product: “A product that could not be what it was claimed to be —as was shown in the end, by the way it was studied— was spoiled because it was they kept a dirty and hot room“.
The prosecutor concluded: “They will do what they have to do, but one investigated. I had no way of knowing if that was hemp or marijuana. We are talking about more than 140 kilos that were packaged for sale.”
The names used for the protagonists of the story are fictitious.
