Virginia Messi
02/11/2021 3:58 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 02/11/2021 4:41 PM
"I'm living an ordeal. In the last three years I saw my three daughters no more than five times. I talk to them on the phone every night and they ask me: '
When are you coming back, Dad
?'
Appealing to emotion, rather than the evidence against him, the former city police officer Iván Blizniouk (38) testified this Thursday before the judges of the Federal Oral Court No. 4, via Zoom.
Blizniouk is on trial as part of an international gang that tried to send 12 suitcases containing 386 kilos of cocaine to the Russian Federation using diplomatic channels.
The case has a twin trial in the European country, with four defendants, a debate about which little and nothing is known.
On the first day of the oral trial of the case in Argentina, Iván spoke little (no more than 10 minutes), he said that he is studying law in Marcos Paz prison,
he pleaded not guilty
and refused to answer questions.
"I will wait for the prosecutor to show the evidence against me," he explained after a brief consultation with his lawyers Liliana Borysiuk and Federico Paruolo.
The former inspector noncommissioned officer was much more cautious than his friend Alexander Chikalo (40), who is on trial as a "co-author", identified as the person who packed the drug in the suitcases found in December 2016 in a school attached to the embassy of the Russian Federation in Argentina.
Chikalo -represented by lawyer Osvaldo Miranda-
denied ever having seen the seized suitcases
and, like his friend Iván (with whom they share dual Argentine-Russian nationality), proclaimed his innocence.
But, unlike Blizniouk, this mechanic dedicated for years to the merchant marine
wanted to tell his version in great detail
.
And he even answered each and every one of the questions that the prosecutor Abel Córdoba asked him about a series of wiretaps in which he appears very committed.
The former prefect and former deputy inspector of the City Police Iván Blizniouk (38), tried by the Federal Oral Court No. 4 for the case of the narco-valijas in the Russian embassy.
Chikalo's testimony was quite detailed.
He recalled how he met Blizniouk in the Russian-Argentine community and also stated how their links were with Andrey Kovalchuk (52), mastermind of the operation and currently detained in Russia, as well as former embassy accountant Ali Abyanov (50 ), Ishtimir Khudzhamov (31) and Vladimir Kalmycov.
These last two were the ones who appeared at the Moscow airport to remove the suitcases in which the Gendarmerie had placed flour to make the controlled delivery.
In Russia, Khudzhamov said that he believed he was participating as a financier in a Kopi Luwak coffee smuggling (the most expensive in the world), a business that had Belgian buyers and for which Kovalchuk had promised him a profit of 70,000 euros.
In his investigative statement on Thursday before judges Jorge Gorini, Ricardo Basilico and Néstor Costabel, Chikalo raised a similar scenario: he did not deny his interest in doing business with the "mysterious Mr. K" -as the media baptized Kovalchuk-, but he assured that he always believed that Argentine high-end wines were being talked about, covered with skin, wheat and meat.
Cocaine at the Russian embassy.
"Once I asked Kovalchuk if it was so convenient to take those things to Russia, taking into account the cost of tickets and others. He told me that
'the Homeland' paid him the shipping,
" Chikalo answered when the prosecutor asked him about his role. in the businesses that Kovalchuk did in Argentina.
"When in October 2016 Iván told me that Kovalchuk had asked him to take something out of the country without going through Customs, it seemed very dangerous to me, I was scared. It also surprised me. I told Iván not to have any more relationship with him. I tried to scare I told Iván: 'It
can be anything, it can be a scandal on a world scale,
"Chikalo said.
Sell smoke?
The story told by the mechanic paints an Andrey Kovalchuk very similar to the one described by the two Russians detained at the Moscow airport: a man who
boasted of his influences
and alternated versions in which he presented himself as a diplomat or as a representative of companies interested in sell luxury goods, be it coffee, cigars, semi-precious stones or cognac.
"He always talked about business, contacts and never showed a paper, a document that endorsed what he said. When we went to dinner or met in a cafe, we had to pay ourselves. Iván told me that once he appeared in a taxi and he had to pay for it, "Chikalo declared.
Was the
Mysterious Lord K actually a 'smoke seller
'?
And, if so, how did a blackmail of such magnitude come to have a line to try to smuggle almost 400 kilos of cocaine to Russia, where a kilo costs about 100,000 euros?
If you didn't have a peso, how did you get to Buenos Aires on a private plane?
The article in the French newspaper Le Monde about the trial in Moscow for the kidnapping of 400 kilos of cocaine in the Russian base in Argentina
Those who try to answer these questions maintain that the drug - whose origin is still a mystery - was stranded in the embassy after a change of staff and that everything jumped due to
an internal invoice pass between diplomats.
Whether this is true or not, there are many points to unveil.
To begin with, what happened between December 8, 2016 (when the Russians say that the secret service found the drug in the embassy) and December 14, the day the ambassador calls the then Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich , to make the complaint.
In addition, there is no one who has worked on this case and does not even wonder
why the Russians made it public and were
able to solve the issue indoors.
More doubts.
Did the embassy accountant Ali Abyanov (50), now a prisoner in Russia, retired a few months earlier, in August 2016, did he have anything to do with the discovery of the drug?
A detail: Abyanov himself declared in his country that he had collected bribes from Kovalchuk to send him suitcases by diplomatic mail in previous years.
The last.
Did the suicide of Pyotr Polchikov - head of the Latin American Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry -, which occurred three weeks after the discovery of the drug, have something to do with the 400 kilos of cocaine?
EMJ