Senad special intelligence agents, with the army’s Internal Defense Operations Command (CODI), intercepted a criminal convoy moving from the Curuguaty area toward Salto del Guairá in the early hours of Wednesday and seized 88.991 tonnes of pressed marijuana, the largest marijuana transit seizure in Paraguayan history.[1][2] The convoy comprised 19 vehicles of small, medium and large size used to move the shipment toward the Brazilian border.[1][2]

Shootout, detentions and a record weighing

When anti-drug officers closed in near kilometre 2 of Salto del Guairá, the convoy tried to escape and opened fire, damaging official vehicles; five suspects were detained, one of them wounded and treated under protocol, and one member of the criminal group was killed, with no casualties among Senad or CODI personnel.[1][2] All 19 vehicles and the drugs were taken to Senad’s regional base in Salto del Guairá on prosecutor Abel Bareiro’s orders, where the final weighing confirmed the record volume.[1][3][4]

Senad valued the load at over 13.3 million dollars on the Brazilian market, a blow to the logistics of groups using Paraguayan territory as a transit route.[1][5] The seizure far exceeded the 57,000 kilograms taken in 2024’s Operation Marangatu, and forty police officers stationed along the route were placed under investigation after the convoy passed eleven posts without being stopped.[3][2]

On 5 December 2025 the Organized Crime judge Osmar Legal Troche granted the prosecutors’ request and ordered pre-trial detention for all five detainees, who were charged with international drug trafficking and, for some, criminal association and unlawful firearms possession.[4] Senad named retired police officer Benicio Silva, 41, alias Silva Hu, and Carlos Miguel González Aguilera, 29, alias Carlitos, as the suspected owners of the load, and both had arrest warrants.[6]