Gendarmería Nacional’s anti-drug operations squadron carried out 14 simultaneous searches at addresses in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Misiones provinces under an operation named Cristal Verde.[1] The searches followed four years of criminal investigation and information gathered from an informant’s confession.[1] Seven members of the organisation were detained during the searches.[1] The Morón federal criminal and correctional court, Juzgado Federal N° 2, ordered the detentions and the seizure of the drugs, money, vehicles and weapons.[1]
Investigative sources told the Télam news agency that the operation was ordered by Morón federal judge Jorge Rodríguez and came out of a confession in a case that had seized 2,900 kg of marijuana three years earlier.[2] The network carried drugs from Paraguay to Buenos Aires province for sale.[1] About 500 Gendarmería Nacional officers took part in the field studies and surveillance across the provinces.[2] Investigators traced the band’s leaders to a house in Escobar that held its base and a kitchen for making pink and gold pills stamped “Visa” and “Mastercard”.[2]
Officers seized 480 kilos 252 grams of cannabis sativa.[1] A Télam account of the same operation gives the marijuana total as 485.812 kg, valued with the ecstasy at about 120 million pesos by judicial sources.[2] The searches also produced 60 grams of cocaine and 17,304 synthetic pills, which are not cannabis and are kept out of the cannabis figures.[1] Investigators said 14,000 pink pills and 3,000 gold pills were found ready for sale.[2] Cash seized included 2,775,352 pesos, 189,500 US dollars and 50 euros, in the Gendarmería’s own tally.[1]
Officers also seized nine vehicles, four motorcycles and a quad bike.[1] The force took pistols in calibres 9, 22 and 25, a calibre 16 shotgun and calibre 32 ammunition.[1] A La Nación account puts the detainees at eight, seven men, two of them Paraguayan, and one woman, all adults with criminal records.[3] The detainees were to be questioned by judge Rodríguez in the following hours or the next day, once the last procedures and the counting of the seized items were finished.[3] Investigators said the inquiry was continuing in search of other members of the organisation and other places in the synthetic drug distribution chain.[2]
