Gaston neffen
02/26/2021 17:40
Clarín.com
Rural
Updated 02/26/2021 6:17 PM
It is the largest case of cattle theft - cattle rustling - in a long time remembered.
The sequence began on February 19, when one of the managers of the Estancia "Las Gamitas" - owned by Domingo Iannozzi, one of the main cattle ranchers in the province of Santa Fe - reported in Reconquista that
almost 2,000 animals had disappeared.
The ranch covers 70,000 hectares and is close to Los Tábanos (370 kilometers north of Santa Fe), a small town on the border between the Bajo Submeridionales and the Cuña Boscosa.
They are huge fields, very isolated and full of espartillos and tacurús (giant ant hills).
The main activity is low-load livestock per hectare.
In these pastures it is very common for
animals to cross from one producer's field to another.
So when Iannozzi employees detected that heifers were missing, they asked permission and entered the neighbor's lot.
There they say that they found a farm that they knew well, but that had
the
identification marks adulterated.
On Sunday February 22, the Reconquista regional prosecutor, Rubén Martínez, ordered
raids to
be carried out
in two fields
that are next to “Las Gamitas”.
They are called “La Nochera” and “El Lío”, and they belong to Hernán Agú (a lawyer and cattle producer who was a provincial deputy in Santa Fe for the UCR), and his son Emilio.
The raid was hard and complex work because
more than 1,700 animals
had to be
linked and verified.
During the procedure, the Los Pumas Rural Guard detected 150 cows and steers that
belonged to Iannozzi,
and which had very grossly adulterated identification marks.
In statements to a media in the north of Santa Fe (Reconquista Hoy), Agú assured that in his field animals of another person are
not
improperly marked but he
did not rule out the possibility of an error.
The fields of the Lowlands are an enormous expanse of espartillares (pajonales) and tacurús (anthill), and they are very isolated.
Justice suspects otherwise
.
Due to the number of animals that disappeared from “Las Gamitas”, an “ant theft” is being investigated that could be carried out for
more than a year.
The Iannozzi field has 70,000 hectares, about
25,000 animals
and even a 1,700-meter concrete runway so that small planes can land.
The gross adulteration of the marks that identify the cattle opens another line of investigation:
how did these animals then manage to enter the slaughter and marketing circuit without being detected?
What the prosecutors are wondering is why no one denounced that this cattle had been stolen when passing through the first links of the cattle chain, and that is why they analyze and seek evidence to determine if a network operates in the north of Santa Fe - an association illicit - to steal and slaughter livestock.
At the moment
there are no detainees or accused
, but the case continues to advance.
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