July 6, 2023, 9:17 AM
July 6, 2023, 9:17 AM
The special commission of legislators investigating the case’drug flight‘, and which in February implicated the state airline BoA, found evidence of several shipments of cocaine to Spain, as well as to other countries from the Viru Viru and Jorge Wilstermann airports in Cochabamba.
“It is not a single flight and I can advance the data without hindering the investigation that is in reserve. The data to which we accessed leads us to believe that these are several flights that have occurred in the immediate past,” said deputy Saúl Lara, from Comunidad Ciudadana (CC), who is part of the legislative entity created for the investigation. .
The deputy assured that his opinion is not politically motivated because there is a shared concern with his colleagues from the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) that this case be clarified and all responsibilities established.
“It is a highly complex issue; drug trafficking has penetrated state structures and hopefully there are no implications of a political order in the government structure”, Lara declared to the Influyentes program, broadcast by EL DEBER Radio.
He indicated that the Prosecutor’s Office must deliver a Detailed reportwith the progress of the investigations with the perspective of making the information and findings transparent after a month of investigations.
Lara’s revelation took place after the Public Ministry decided to remove the prosecutors who were in charge of the investigation of the “narcoflight.” The commission of prosecutors received the order on Monday to drop the case, after taking statements from the top staff of BoA and Felcn. In addition, the prosecutors had already planned to summon the directors of other state institutions involved.
For Lara, this case penetrated various institutions, including the state airline, the Police, the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC) and the air operators of Naabol. In fact, almost half a ton of cocaine evaded all the controls at the Viru Viru airport, from where the drug shipment is supposed to have shipped.
In fact, at the time, the Minister of Government, Eduardo Del Castillo, admitted that the narco “penetrated” in the institutions.
The Spanish Civil Guard reported the discovery of 484 kilos of cocaine on BoA flight OB776 after the operation carried out on February 11 at Madrid’s Barajas airport. Spanish Customs published the details of that operation on May 30.
The flight operated by BoA was made with a plane rented from the Spanish charter travel company Wamos. It is also known that the drug was discovered by an elite unit of the Spanish Ministry of Finance, but that it coordinates with the European Commission, the operational entity of the institutional block of the Member States of the European Union (EU).
The deputy ‘evista’ of the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) Patricio Mendoza affirmed that he has surprised this change of prosecutors and believes that some ministers “are clouding the investigations.”
“They were going to summon national directors and those close to a minister, so, for me, here is a hand getting into justice to save their skins,” said the legislator on this case.