Investigators from the National Police’s prison intelligence and analysis unit, the UIAP, suspect that drugs and other goods were being brought in for prisoners at Unit 4 of Uruguay’s national rehabilitation institute, the INR.[1][2][3] After several months of investigation, UIAP officers carried out a search of the grounds and found the goods near one of the prison’s modules.[1]

The drugs were found in the afternoon of Sunday 23 August in the grounds of the former Comcar prison, between a military area and the Ministry of the Interior’s prison compound.[4] Officers found drug bricks and other items in plain sight near module 6, in a common area the investigators believe was used to store drugs for distribution to different parts of the prison.[4] Local outlet NoticiasC21 reported that the operation took place in a module of Unit 4, the former Comcar.[5] Police seized 2.320 kilos of marijuana, which the Ministry of the Interior described only as a vegetable substance.[1][2] The operation also took 14.894 kilos of a yellowish substance and 353 grams of a white substance, substances identified in later reporting as cocaine paste and cocaine.[4][3] Alongside the drugs, officers seized 38 mobile phones, 10 TV Box devices and 13 routers.[1][3]

The Ministry of the Interior valued all the drugs at US$330,000, or 13.3 million Uruguayan pesos.[1] The ministry put the whole haul, other substances included, at 17.567 kilos, equivalent to 23,500 doses.[1] The fourth-shift arrest prosecution service ordered the seized material documented, security camera footage reviewed and forensic police brought in.[1]

The drugs were about 20 metres from a military guard post, a fact the head of police investigations, Pablo Lotito, cited in saying police and military collusion with prisoners could not be ruled out.[4][3] Narcotics prosecutor Rodrigo Morosoli took over the investigation into a criminal organisation operating inside and outside the prisons, and the army opened an administrative inquiry.[4] The ministry said the operation formed part of the National Police’s intelligence work and fight against organised crime both outside and inside prisons.[1] State broadcaster Portal Medios Públicos republished the ministry’s statement, describing the operation as carried out in a module of Unit 4, the former Comcar, and the haul as more than 17 kilos of drugs.[6] Some two months later, on 7 October, the UIAP seized the phones of two soldiers from the prison’s perimeter guard during six raids in Montevideo and Artigas.[7]

The INR’s director, Ana Juanche, said it was presumable that a corruption network was involved, because drugs could not be getting in through prison visits.[3] Narcotics prosecutor Rodrigo Morosoli asked, through the police, for the list of soldiers on the perimeter guard, and the military refused to give the police the information.[3] Investigation sources put the sale value of everything seized at about US$300,000.[3]