Virginia Messi
05/26/2021 6:00 AM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 05/26/2021 8:55 AM
This Wednesday at 11 in the morning, judges Luis Imas, Karina Perelli and Alejandro Zavala - members of the Economic Criminal Court No. 3- will begin the hearings of a historic trial against
one of the most important clans in the transnational drug trafficking business
.
The Lozas, whose hard core was born to the three Salta brothers Erwin (42), Valdemar (57) and José Gonzalo (55), are accused of laundering some 800 million pesos as a result of their cocaine exports to Europe.
According to the indictment - which will be distributed by the prosecutor Gabriel Pérez Barbera, the Narcocriminality Prosecutor's Office (Procunar), the Anti-Money Laundering Office (Procelac) and the Financial Information Unit (UIF) -, with the drug money they
bought hotels, buildings of garages, mansions, luxury cars and even the Ferrari F355 that was owned by Diego Armando Maradona
.
Despite having entered the country, through an oiled system of mules, some 15 million euros (between 2008 and 2018) no one had detected them until their financier,
Diego Xavier Guastini
(45), handed them over to Justice .
Diego "Dolarín" Guastini.
Guastini spoke for the first time in October 2018. He did so under the figure of "repentant" (or "accused collaborator") to obtain a lesser sentence in a case that had been opened to him for smuggling foreign currency.
"Dolarín" --as some called Guastini-- managed a network of mules that brought money from Europe in suitcases and was at the service of ship bands, such as the Loza or the Atachahua.
His main contacts were at the Intelligence Secretariat (SI).
Due to sanitary restrictions
due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the trial will be done remotely
.
In principle, hearings are planned on Mondays and Wednesdays, plus around 100 witnesses.
Although it sounds strange, it can be seen on the YouTube platform.
However, this detail is far from being the most striking part of the debate that has among its main defendants Erwin "Nene" Loza (42) and his nephews Gonzalo Loza (alias "Junior", 25) and Alan Loza (27), sons by José Gonzalo.
Drug mansions in Argentina.
Clan Loza.
Before continuing, two details.
Detail one: although José Gonzalo was arrested in 2018 in Spain --where he lived--, he died there in 2019. That is why only his children, Alan and Gonzalo ("Junior") will be on the dock.
Detail two: Valdemar Loza is not accused in this trial, who in 2019 was sentenced by the federal Justice of Salta to 15 years in prison in another case of 2017 initiated by the kidnapping of more than a ton of cocaine in a warehouse in Tapiales.
Valdemar was arrested in the Ave Rapaz operation, famous because it was later discovered that the federal police officers in charge of the raids stole some $ 600,000 from the drug trafficker.
A total of eleven agents from the PFA's Emerging Drug and Chemical Precursors Division are awaiting trial for this theft.
Curiosities
The trial against the 11 accused of being part of the Loza clan, with Erwin at the head, will have
its peculiarities
.
Perhaps the most striking is that the man who delivered them, and who as repentant spoke twice against them, will not be there to ratify his sayings: Diego Guastini was killed by hitmen on October 28, 2019 after leaving his Audi in his Quilmes house heading to downtown Buenos Aires, where he had his offices.
His statements were duly recorded (as required by law) by the Procunar prosecutors.
Although the defenses tried to oppose it - and surely will continue to do so - those recordings will be played in the debate as evidence of the charge.
And they are quite juicy, although for the prosecutor Pérez Barbera "they are not key. The case is totally solid without the data provided by the repentant."
Guastini maintained that he personally
helped launder 15 million euros from the clan
and that Erwin Loza was the owner of the cocaine seized in 2013 in the Leones Blancos operation.
The latter is not a minor fact since it was about a ton of drugs that Guastini delivered to the Buenos Aires Police, which would have stolen half to commercialize it on the Atlantic Coast.
For the federal Justice of San Isidro, behind that maneuver, in addition, was the prosecutor Claudio Scapolan.
Cocaine seized in Operation White Lions.
Photo Mauricio Nievas.
Guastini had a lot of information and contributed it to get away, even revealed that the Loza communicated through an encrypted system called Encrochat and explained that, therefore, their messages had not been intercepted.
As stated in the request for elevation in the Loza case, "the repentant collaborator in his statement stated that Erwin would be the owner of two planes and the freight from Bolivia or Salta was done directly by him. He also added that they flew to the province of Santa Fe and had a drug transportation system to the Federal Capital and the Buenos Aires suburbs with Hyundai trucks with double bottom. "
A key witness, assassinated and with a video as his legacy, is not the only curious fact of the debate.
As
Clarín was
able to verify
, Alan and Gonzalo Loza
have David Hamwee (47) as their defender
, a lawyer who appears in important smuggling cases to the point that he himself was convicted in one of the best known.
Corsa magazine published a note several years ago on Diego Maradona's two Ferrari F355s.
In December 2015, he was sentenced to two and a half years in suspended prison for the attempted smuggling of 57 kilos of cocaine in biodiesel.
The sentence was later increased to four and a half years in Cassation.
She is currently appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
What is really cinematic about all this is that Hamwee was found guilty by the same Economic Criminal Court No. 3 (although with different integration), which is now in charge of the trial against the Lozas in which he is a defender.
EMJ
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Talk between two drug traffickers: police stealing drugs and ordering witnesses to be killed