On 23 September 2025 a Salta review judge, Luis Renato Rabbi Baldi Cabanillas, committed a shopkeeper and his partner, the former Miss Orán Martina Oliva, plus two other people to oral trial for belonging to an organisation that transported marijuana from Bolivia.[1] The couple, Gustavo Tolaba and Oliva, and Roberto Leiton were charged with aggravated drug transport, while José Burgos was charged with possessing drugs for sale to street dealers, all under Salta’s federal prosecutor’s office.[1] The case began on 5 February 2025 when Airports Security Police (PSA) officers stopped a Toyota Hilux carrying Tolaba, Oliva and Ángela Cuenca at the Aunor former toll booth on the road into Salta city.[1] The Citroën C3 behind it, with 15 kg of marijuana aboard, made a U-turn and fled toward Jujuy at more than 180 km/h while packages were thrown out of the windows.[1] Officers caught Juan Alberto Romero near the abandoned car by the San Juan de Dios estate in Jujuy, later arrested Leiton in a raid in Orán on 20 February 2025, and detained Burgos in the north of Salta city the same 5 February, finding 250 g of marijuana and 6 million pesos at his home.[1]
Prosecutors said Tolaba and Oliva led the organisation and travelled in the “coche puntero”, a scout car that checked the route ahead of the load, and that Oliva handled its finances and payments.[1] Prosecutors said the group made 31 trips between October 2024 and the end of January 2025, 28 of them ending at Burgos’s house, which they reconstructed from WhatsApp messages and audios in coded language.[1]
Before the trial, two other members were sentenced to six years in prison under abbreviated-trial agreements: Romero by federal guarantees judge Mariela Giménez on 11 September 2025, also for resisting authority, and Cuenca, who was allowed to serve the term under house arrest because she cares for three minor children, one with a disability.[1] The judge rejected a defence request to drop the charges against Oliva or reduce her role to a secondary one, and set the evidence to be presented when the four go on trial.[1]
The Toyota Hilux was the convoy’s scout vehicle and the Citroën C3 followed behind it carrying the marijuana.[1] The Citroën fled along the 9/34 route to the Torzalito roundabout and then onto provincial route 112 until the San Juan de Dios estate in Jujuy, close to the border.[1]
Cuenca, already sentenced and the partner of one man still at large, relayed communications between the load car and the car that swept the route.[1] The investigation began in November 2024 from a PSA report based on an anonymous informant’s tip naming Tolaba and his partner as heads of a gang moving marijuana from Orán to Salta.[1] Burgos was described as the organisation’s main buyer, paying 6 million pesos for each delivery, and prosecutors said money transferred from him to Oliva’s family accounts ran into the millions.[1] The drugs were obtained in bordering Bolivia and brought to this city for sale at street level (narcomenudeo).[1] Federal prosecutor Eduardo Villalba coordinated the district’s case, with deputy prosecutor general Mariana Gamba Cremaschi and assistant prosecutor Florencia Altamirano appearing at the committal hearing.[1]
Burgos tried to flee into a neighbour’s house when he saw the police but was caught, with 250 g of marijuana on him.[1]
