Paraguay’s murdered anti-narcotics prosecutor, Marcelo Pecci. Photo: AFP
The Paraguayan anti-mafia prosecutor Marcelo Pecci was killed Tuesday by armed men who arrived aboard a jet ski at the place where he was honeymooning in the Colombian Caribbean. The crime is revealing the transformation of Paraguay to a cocaine producer and the links between the type of politics and drug trafficking.
RFI consulted with analyst Carlos Aníbal Peris, a political scientist who specializes in drug trafficking at the Catholic University of Asunción, about this crime, which is now under investigation to determine the motive and circumstances of the murder.
-The Pecci prosecutor’s investigation resulted in the mega operation “A Ultranza Py” last month, which led to the resignation of several politicians involved in a criminal structure of international cocaine trafficking. This case sheds light on what you call narcopolitics in Paraguay …
Prosecutor Marcelo Pecci in an image from March 2020. Photo: Reuters
-In fact, we are seeing more and more links between the political sectors, electoral campaigns and drug trafficking groups operating in Paraguay. Moreover, we also see that this operation by drug -pushing groups, protected by many politicians in the region, becomes more complicated in the sense that Paraguay has ceased to be a marijuana -producing country in the past and in simply passing cocaine, to become a country producing cocaine through clandestine laboratories, mainly in the Chaco area.
-What are the changes from being a transient country to a producer?
-That brings in bigger profits, more groups arguing for this underworld of drug trafficking. It brings more violence again, so more and more of our politicians are on the logic of narco-politics.
-You talked about narcopolitics, and I think of phenomena like Colombian parapolitics, that is, this network of mafia relations between drug traffickers, national or regional politicians, and businessmen or landowners. Is this a similar phenomenon in Paraguay?
-Furthermore. While it is true that some contacts have always existed in the area of Pedro Juan Caballero, Concepción, San Pedro, all could be such a dry border with Brazil, in 2008 one of the first cases appeared at the national level. . That case is the preliminary analysis of what is happening in Paraguay. The congressmen themselves, themselves, are accusing themselves in connection with drug trafficking, but it is also seen through these operations as “A Ultranza Py”, and the question we must ask ourselves is why?
-Why?
-One of the main conclusions we drew was that the new electoral law in Paraguay, (elections) is no longer done by lists, but rather nominal. In other words, each candidate has to get the lowest number of votes to reach a position or enter Congress, and that’s where the links to drug traffickers who fund the campaigns of emerging or non -emerging politicians come into play. so that eventually they can get the necessary votes to reach the elective position they want.
The investigation
Prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, along with his wife Claudia Aguilera
Paraguayan authorities did not exclude prosecutor Pecci on Wednesday would have followed in that country from the territory of Paraguayan.
“We think the follow-up can start here,” Paraguayan National Police commander Gilberto Fleitas told local media.
Pecci was shot by unknown assailants on Barú, an island about 40 minutes by boat from the tourist city of Cartagena de Indias.
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Source: Clarin
