05/23/2021 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 05/23/2021 6:01 AM
The post was for two 9mm pistols with a kit to convert them into tactical rifles.
They had been stolen from the base of a special group of the Buenos Aires Police and they were offered on Facebook for 300 thousand pesos.
Investigators posing as buyers, recovered them and detained three people.
One of the vendors turned out to be a prisoner who had been released under the excuse of the coronavirus and did not have an electronic bracelet.
The investigation began after the scandal over the lack of 15 weapons
from the headquarters of the Tactical Unit for Immediate Operations (UTOI), in Puente 12, in La Matanza.
The Buenos Aires Minister of Security, Sergio Berni, has one of his offices there, and it was also the epicenter of the Police protests in September last year.
It is not yet known how or when the theft of the weapons occurred, which was discovered at the end of last April when in one of the raids on a gang that assaulted a merchant from Quilmes, a 9 mm pistol that belonged to the UTOI appeared.
Upon being notified of the discovery by the Justice of Quilmes, the prosecutor of the UFI No. 1 of La Matanza, Gastón Duplaá, ordered an archival in the weapons room of the base located on the Ricchieri Highway and Route 4. There it was discovered that 14 other weapons were missing, including 9mm pistols, shotguns and 2,000 ammunition.
One of the three detainees had left prison benefiting from the excuse of the coronavirus.
Due to this fact, the Internal Affairs Audit that depends on the Buenos Aires Ministry of Security disaffected the three policemen who were in charge of the armory.
In parallel, the Directorate of Investigations against Organized Crime of the Police of the Province began the search for the stolen weapons.
It was on a Facebook buy and sell group that investigators came across a suspicious post.
Two 9-millimeter Bersa pistols with a Roni kit to convert them into rifles, at 300 thousand pesos.
They had the numbering filed
, a more than obvious sign that they belonged to a security force.
In addition to pistols, they also sold five fist weapons.
In order to find the sellers,
the investigators posed as buyers
and arranged a meeting for the payment and delivery of the weapons.
The weapons belonged to the UTOI and they had a special kit to convert them into rifles.
The appointment was in the town of Los Eucaliptus de Quilmes.
The two parties arrived in different cars.
When the vendors showed up to receive the payment, the police officers identified themselves and detained them.
With the information of the point where the two pistols were hidden, the officers went to a field located in La Rioja and Ricardo Rojas.
There, a few meters from the house of one of the suspects, the agents found a bag with the two copies that were offered on the web and that turned out to be two of the 15 stolen from the UTOI weapons room.
In addition to the Directorate of Investigations against Organized Crime, the 8th police station in Quilmes and the Halcón Group participated in the operation.
But the strawberry for dessert appeared when investigators searched the backgrounds of the detainees.
One of them, the one who had published the weapons on Facebook, had been released from prison last year on probation, thanks to the ruling of the judge of the Criminal Cassation Chamber, Victor Violini, who had allowed the exit of inmates who could be seen affected by the virus in their confined condition.
The pistols were hidden in a field to be sold for 300 thousand pesos.
The three defendants refused to testify when questioned by the prosecutor Garete.
Meanwhile, the investigation
continues with the search for the 12 missing weapons
of the UTOI, a special group created in 2017 to act in emerging conflicts.
As for the three police officers who have been disaffected by Internal Affairs, none of them is charged in the court case because their participation in the disappearance of the weapons has not yet been proven.
The event that led to the discovery of the arms theft at the UTOI was the appearance of a 9 mm pistol in
a raid on the gang that had attacked a merchant in Quilmes
in September.
The man was stolen 200 thousand dollars and 2 million pesos from his house located in San Francisco Solano.
In these operations, two suspects were arrested, one of them the son of a businessman.
The April raids were ordered by the prosecutor Mariana Curra Zamaniego, of the UFI No. 6 of Quilmes and were carried out by the Departmental Directorate of Investigations (DDI) of Quilmes, which found the UTOI's 9-millimeter pistol, chargers and even a Roni Kit , used to turn a pistol into a rifle.
GL
