As a private security guard in a shopping mall in the west of Buenos Aires, Darío Bruno (39) earned 120 thousand pesos working between ten and twelve hours a day. A notice from Global Finanzas, on Facebook, alerted him: "administrative driver to transfer private correspondence" is wanted. Bruno got in touch and had his interview on March 9 in a pituca office in Olivos. "I spoke with a lady, Veronica Pardi introduced herself, who hired me that same day. He told me he would earn 300,15 pesos, working <> days a month and traveling the world."
Bruno, a father of two, was very enthusiastic and told his previous employer that he would resign. "Imagine, it was my life's work. I was going to work fifteen days a month, to travel the world, planes, hotels, food, all paid. He made no noise to me, I trusted, I signed a confidentiality contract, I was interviewed by a woman who seemed credible, what do I know, "says Bruno, physically and mentally exhausted, from an airport in Africa, which for security reasons, prefers not to reveal. "I don't sleep or bathe, I'm waiting to get money to go back to Argentina."
Bruno has been abroad for a month. He traveled on 23 April to Ethiopia. It was his first trip within 43 days of being hired. "I actually asked when I would get paid and was told after this trip. I arrived in Addis Ababa, they told me that a person would leave me a suitcase for my hotel and I had to take it to India. I went through four scanners and nothing happened. I handed over some envelopes and some documents and everything seemed in order," Bruno says.
"I'm calm about my legal situation, but I'm at the airport because I'm scared and here I feel safe," says Dario.
Then there was another trip to Guinea, where they were going to deliver a new suitcase to the hotel where she was staying that was to be transferred to Malaysia. "I had cash that they had given me to eat, move and sleep in a hotel," says Darío.
But last week he began to feel some doubts because he sent WhatsApp to the company Global Finance and had no answers. "I insisted with my salary, with when they were going to pay me. For three days I was sending messages and nothing. A single tick appeared to the recipient and I was struck by the silence for so many days."
What Dario Bruno did not know was that the lack of answers was because a couple under the alias of "Veronica and Javier" were being arrested "for being at the head ofa company that recruited people with false jobs, which was used as mules or human couriers to move drugs to countries like Ethiopia, India, Malaysia and Thailand," sources in the investigation tell Clarín.
"There was a raid on a home in Ramos Mejía and a couple who promoted a modality of work already denounced in October of last year was arrested. They are detained pending the investigation and what the judge dictates, "said from the Prosecutor's Office of Narcocriminality (PROCUNAR). "Regarding the Argentine who is at an airport in Africa, he is not charged or mentioned in the file. It does not have any restrictions nor has any illegal activity been detected," they clarified.
"This drug trafficking network," the investigators point out, "has two Argentine people arrested and prosecuted in Ethiopia for the same modality. They were caught moving drugs in their suitcases, without knowing it."
Dario is desperate to return. He knows that his brother Claudio is moving heaven and earth to raise the funds to buy a ticket that will bring him back to Argentina. "We are in the countdown, we are about to buy the ticket and from your arrival a complaint will be made for labor fraud," says Nicolás Payarola, Bruno's lawyer.
Fleeing from the hotel to the airport
From Guinea, when Dario began to doubt everything, another movie journey was born. "I didn't imagine that what happened would happen, nor did I believe that my first time abroad was going to be like this," he says. In Conakry, the capital, he would receive the new suitcase that he would take to Malaysia the next day. "But my head was a thousand, I wouldn't stop, I felt like I was being shit. I decided to write to the Embassy of Argentina in Ethiopia – there is no embassy in Guinea – and I told what was wrong with me."
He was able to contact and found the consul Rodrigo Forcade, who after confirming that Bruno's passport and visa were correct asked him what company he worked for. "Global Finance? It is being investigated. If they call you, don't answer. I got out of there." Said and done. "At about one o'clock in the morning I ran away from the hotel. He didn't want to be seen by anyone. I knew that the suitcase they would bring me the next morning would have drugs in the double bottom."
Despite the exhaustion and the lack of clarity that he says he maintains, Bruno does feel that "I had some luck in all this hell ... I avoided moving that suitcase with double bottom, otherwise I could be in jail. There are two Argentines who were arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned in Ethiopia. And from what I could find out they are kids who did the same job as me, they belonged to the same company. I was on that path, no doubt. In these African countries the laws are ruthless and until they reverse a ruling it can take a lifetime."
Aware of the judicial situation of his "employers", Dario snorts. "The truth is that I feel relieved, I swear ... And I'm glad they caught them, they happen to be sons of bitches, because these two ruined the lives of several kids like me who were in need of a laburo and today they are living hell. They have their comeuppance,."
At the Argentine embassy in the country where he is, they told him to stay at the airport "for security." And he admits: "I'm afraid, I feared for my life, I'm in a place I don't know, the language is impossible and you don't know who can appear."
On his fourth day at the airport, he received $100 in aid from "an Argentine embassy, and I have almost no mango left and they told me they don't have any more because they don't have the resources. I'm stretching them but I don't have any more. I said that the airline company gave me a voucher to buy morfi."
He can't wait to get to Argentina and get back to normal. "I had been offered a job as an ambulance driver to transport ART patients, blank. I hope there is still the vacancy. And if it is not given, I will do maintenance work, I do painting, electricity, gas. I have been working on my own since I was 14 years old and you don't always get a job, that's why I accepted the proposal of these criminals."
ACE
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