According to a report published on Tuesday, October 18, by the Paraguayan Congressional Investigative Committee “Bicameral Commission of Inquiry” (CBI), the landlocked South American country has become a “logistical corridor for international crime.”
The chairman of the CBI, Senator Jorge Querey, stated to reporters in Asunción.
Querey, who gained international notoriety for being the personal physician of former president and Senate colleague Fernando Lugo, also said the committee would submit a proposal for the CBI document to be sent to international organizations and made available to the public.
Querey also pointed to cases of cigarette trafficking associated mainly with the tobacco companies of former President of the Republic Horacio Cartes.
Some of these cigarettes were transported on the Venezuelan-Iranian cargo plane still stuck at the Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires, even though all crew members had been cleared of any wrongdoing.
“There is a mechanism that works for criminal organizations; tobacco companies, exchange offices, and cooperatives are actively involved in laundering money,” Querey stressed.
The senator also announced that the CBI would propose to the National Congress to send the report to international organizations and make it available to all Paraguayan citizens.
The document was written in a little more than two months and is based “only on documents” and not on “opinions,” Querey stressed.
“There are no personal opinions, no headlines in the media; all members (of the CBI) had access to the documents about money laundering,” he stressed.
According to him, several tobacco companies are “reselling among themselves and not paying taxes” and sending products to Brazil, with an organization linked to drug trafficking and international terrorism as the buyer.
He also pointed out that the companies named in the report are linked to former President Horacio Cartes, who was placed on the list of the most corrupt politicians by the U.S. State Department.
“Exchanges between companies, unjustified loans between companies, purchases and repurchases between the same companies, transactions that are not carried out legally, we have identified the companies and the directors of the client companies that are linked to illegal trade and money laundering,” Querey said.
The report seeks to identify the logistical path of trafficking through criminal organizations such as the Rotela Clan, the Red Command, and the First Capital Command, mainly dedicated to illegal arms trafficking.
With information from Latina Press