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The Fall of the Loza Clan: Terminal Cancer and the Secrets of Room 808

2021-06-23T15:45:03.859Z


The capo Gonzalo Loza was admitted to a Madrid hospital in 2018. His room became a logistics center for the band, but everything was heard and recorded by the Spanish Police.


Virginia Messi

06/19/2021 6:00 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • Police

Updated 06/19/2021 6:00 AM

José Gonzalo Loza died on the night of November 6, 2019 at the Xanit Hospital in Malaga, Spain.

He was 53 years old and had esophageal cancer that was consuming him to death.

Despite his efforts to traffic

large amounts of cocaine and launder millions of euros

 without being discovered, he and his family had fallen a year earlier, on December 12, 2018, in a joint operation between Argentina, Spain and Italy.

By December 2018 Gonzalo - born in Salta in January 1966 - had known for a long time that he had to build the succession of the band that he had founded with his brothers Valdemar and Erwin, and that later his sons Daniel Gonzalo (aliases " Junior ") and Alan.

Especially the Spanish "leg", which he commanded.

With cancer progressing, more and more in need of morphine, Gonzalo undertook the task of teaching him every trick, introducing him to every contact, explaining every route to "Junior."

And that task began seriously in October 2018 when he was admitted to the Hospital la Luz in Madrid to introduce him to cancer treatment.

"I'm going to hang up the gloves

, I want to be calm, I want to treat myself. Now my kid comes, who is my biological son. That is, you come with him and the one who is going to stay is him, I hang up the gloves", Gonzalo explained to some drug suppliers who went to see him at the hospital.

The conversation took place on October 9, 2018 and was duly registered by the Spanish Police.

Since 5 of that month, by authorization of the judge, the Court of Instruction No. 14 of Malaga, the Police listened to the head of the clan thanks to an environmental microphone placed in his room, the 808.

Loza had not been admitted to that room originally, but with an "administrative" excuse they

had managed to change it to another previously conditioned with state-of-the-art microphones

, so sophisticated that, although the drug traffickers went through everything before speaking, they could not find anything.

Room 808 quickly became Gonzalo's operations center, where he received family, contacts, friends and subordinates.

Everything he said between October 5 and 15, 2018 ended up incriminating him

, in detail.

Two months after being admitted to Madrid, the entire clan would fall into Operation "Cambalache":

15 arrested in Argentina, 31 in Spain and 3 in Italy.

It was a joint effort that required the creation of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) coordinated by Eurojust, a judicial cooperation body.

In total, the Spaniards were able to capture 450 conversations in room 808.

They were about 225 hours of precious, precise and forceful information

that first served the Spaniards in case 1414.01 / 17, before the Court of Instruction 14 of Malaga and in which intervened the Special Anti-Drug Prosecutor's Office of the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Kingdom of Spain.

Then the three DVDs with the recordings were sent to the Gendarmerie, which was handling the case, for smuggling and money laundering, together with the Procunar, the Procelac, the prosecutor Pablo Turano and the economic criminal judge Pablo Yadarola.

Of those conversations, more lapidary than the testimony as repentant of the narco financier Diego Guastini (assassinated by hitmen in August 2019) was discussed this week in the two hearings of the oral trial that the Capital Economic Criminal Court No. 3 takes against 11 members of the clan, including Erwin "El Nene" Loza (43), Gonzalo ("Junior", 25) and Alan (27).

Search, search the couches

If something characterized the Loza Clan, it was the care they always put in their communications

using systems such as Encrochat or Diomerc, which encrypt cell phone messages.

Another resource was to use signal inhibitors to be able to use radio systems when lowering the drug in Europe.

That is why in the cases against them there are not those classic wiretapping or texts that tend to abound in drug trafficking cases.

And in this context, the recordings taken in room 808 of the Hospital La Luz in Madrid turned out to be true jewels.

Although Gonzalo and his son Daniel suspected they might be listening, they could not find a microphone.

Even so,

Daniel was very nervous because his father talked about his business without taking care of himself

, even though the door to the room was open.

"That's it, let's not talk anymore, there is no TV, you can hear everything out there, boludo," Daniel reproaches his father and a Spanish contact with whom they were meeting in room 808.

"Check under the chairs, if they put microphones on us, there under the chairs," Gonzalo tells his son who, very nervous, retorts:

"That's it, if they put microphones, we are all going to fall into prison

.

"

"Naaa, what are we going to fall, until they take the gilada (drug) they can't put us in jail for what we're talking about, idiot ..." Gonzalo tries to reassure him.

Gonzalo continued to receive people in the hospital and to talk on the phone, even through the loudspeaker, which improved the reception of the ambient microphone.

His "Master Class" to his youngest son turned out to be a boomerang that would end one of the most important drug families in Argentina.

GL

Look also

Surprise in the trial of the Loza Clan: Leonardo Fariña's lawyer is summoned to testify

Trial of the Loza clan: 500 witnesses cited, the great bet of the defenses to wear in an eternal debate

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-06-23

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