The “manager of the Waterway” –as Sebastián Marset was defined by the head of the Anti-Drug Prosecutors of Paraguay, Marco Alcaraz– was investigated for 23 crimes in Uruguayan territory, according to a record he accessed The Observer. But he is currently in the sights of the prosecutor Diego Pérez for the threat against the anti-drug prosecutor Mónica Ferrero, and for the attack on the Montevideo Anti-Narcotics Brigade.
One of the threatening messages to Ferrero It came from the cell phone of the soccer contractor’s son, Gerardo Arias. Both were convicted of carrying weapons in public places. The other message was sent from a geolocated phone in Peru. The threat was signed by the PCU group (First Uruguayan Cartel), the drug gang that operates in South America and is allegedly led by Marset.
“We are a little bit angry as you see with the narcotics part! We already gave them a little scare so they can see that we are not afraid of them”, said the WhatsApp message in reference to the grenade that exploded in the Anti-Drug Brigade on May 9, 2020. They told Ferrero: “We want you to respect us so that we can respect them, from then on there will be no attacks against the entities, in charge of you, or against you! If they keep making things difficult for us, we’re going to be a little bit tougher.” Prosecutor Diego Pérez continues to gather evidence to be able to link him to that case.
In March of last year, Rodrigo “Loli” Fontana was captured, a man also linked to the threats and whom the researchers consider Marset’s reference man in Uruguay. He is imprisoned in Brazil and it was Rivera’s prosecutor Alejandra Domínguez who requested his extradition to Uruguay. This week, the group threatened Domínguez, who is now in police custody. Marset is also pointed out by the Colombian prosecutor’s office as the intellectual author of the murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, who carried out the largest anti-drug operation in the country.
criminal history
They are two very long-suffering young people in their lives, but with a family that they formed with effort,” said María Cristina Gutiérrez, Marset’s lawyer, when she wanted to get him out of jail in 2018 where he was serving preventive detention for homicide. But this was not the first stain that Marset had on his judicial file. In 2012, at the age of 20, he had been prosecuted for a receiving crime. The following year, in September, for drug possession and in October, for trafficking.
He jumped into the big-league drug business when he traveled to Paraguay in 2019. “Since I was a child, it was noticeable that I painted for crack,” he said ironically, in dialogue with The Observera judicial operator who had the opportunity to imprison him for some of these crimes and who alluded to the facade of Marset, who for a time played soccer in Paraguay.
In national territory, it was Operation Halcones that put him under the scrutiny of the authorities who are dedicated to the fight against drug trafficking. Through electronic surveillance, the Prosecutor’s Office of Mónica Ferrero was able to detect in 2013 that Marset, together with another man, transported marijuana from Bella Unión to Montevideo. The couple from the mega-arc also participated. While the other man was driving, Marset in another car acted as a “pointer” on the route, according to the conviction to which he agreed The Observer.
The men then agreed to bring a shipment from Argentina. Marset’s wife and partner traveled to Buenos Aires and closed the deal in downtown Buenos Aires. Once back in the country, Marset again acted as pointer and they went to a service station in Mercedes, where they were detained by the police with three suitcases, four conservatives and three cardboard boxes containing bricks of vegetable substance that turned out to be dope. In 2015, the three of them and two more people who sold at retail were convicted.
In 2018 he was charged with the most serious charge and whose dismissal made him land in Paraguay. The prosecutor of Atlántida Darviña Viera accused him of having killed his best childhood friend for a drug problem. The victim, who on August 14 of that year had gone to dinner with her brother-in-law, began chatting with Marset after dinner and summoned him to meet at the Las Toscas complex where the man who was later murdered lived.
He asked the brother-in-law to wait for him in the car and as he was changing seats, he heard a loud noise and saw a man shooting the victim. He stated that he could not see his face because it was too dark. The man asked not to die in the street, but according to his brother-in-law he did not say who shot him.
The prosecution requested the dismissal of Marset more than a year later due to lack of evidence, although according to sources in the case, it happened because Marset understood that the victim had stolen it.
The Police also links his organization to at least three operations that occurred between 2020 and 2021. The so-called Baghdad (February 2020) when 347 kilos of pastabase and 206 kg of cocaine were seized, which had been dropped by a small plane in Artigas, the arab operation (March 2021) where they found more than 600 kg of cocaine and the Operation La Nina where they seized money and guns.
