The Lima-Lobos are one of Bolivia's most powerful narco clans. Just put the two surnames together in an Internet search engine for the notes about them to explode on the computer screen.
They are seriously heavy: they put millionaire shipments of cocaine in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay using their own planes that they pass off as stolen, to avoid complications.
According to sources consulted by Clarín, they would be the owners (at least the original owners) of the shipment of 324,800 kilos of cocaine found in the Cessna plane that, on Tuesday afternoon, crashed on a neighborhood road near the Chaco town of Avia Terai.
The plane with Bolivian registration plunged into a field in the town of Avia Terai.
The plane was so loaded with drugs that when it tried to land it became destabilized and ended up upside down.
Its two occupants managed to run away and get into a blue van that was waiting for them. They appeared to have been lucky and escaped unharmed, witnesses said.
The place is very close to Route 6, which connects with Resistencia, and it is believed that it was not chosen at random. "There was no bad weather or anything. They tried to use the road as a runway and made a bad maneuver," a source speculated.
The same drug plane that crashed in a field in Chaco, in a photo from 2021.
They didn't land well and lost a fortune on drugs. But, professionals in spite of everything, they took with them the GPS with the route they had made.
In the place, inside the plane, 10 large packages full of cocaine remained. Each had 30 loaves. Nine of those bundles carried bricks with the logo of an open hand. The rest bore the drawing of a bearded man. In general, this indicates origin or destination, a clue to investigate, but there seem to be others firmer.
According to the first information, the Cessna 210 model Turbo Centurión II (Bolivian registration CP-3123) had been stolen on Sunday in an aeroclub in La Paz, Bolivia.
The packages of the drug bore the logo of a hand and a bearded man.
However, sources of the Argentine investigation relativized this since the same plane appears photographed in an investigation initiated three years ago.
As Clarín learned, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Gendarmerie began working with the Bolivian authorities on the Lima-Lobo line in a file that was left in charge of Chaco federal judge Zunilda Niremperger.
The accident on Tuesday afternoon in Avia Terai precipitated a little the times of the cause that points to this super-powerful clan that for decades has sent shipments to Brazil and in recent years added on its routes to Argentina and northern Uruguay.
"The Lima-Lobo family began to gain prominence in the '90s, establishing its power base in the municipality of San Joaquín, Beni department, in northern Bolivia, near the border with Brazil. From there they began supplying cocaine to drug trafficking groups in Colombia and Brazil, including the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando de la Capital – PCC), according to Interpol and Bolivia's interior minister," says In Sight Crime, a media outlet specializing in the investigation of organized crime.
"The group reportedly had a fleet of clandestine planes and airstrips, as well as other land and river routes, to ship cocaine across the border into Brazil, according to Bolivian Police Chief Jhonny Aguilera. Once there, the product takes two directions: to the main cities for domestic consumption, and to strategic seaports, where it is loaded on container ships destined for the lucrative European market, "adds the note dedicated entirely to drug cartels in Bolivia.
In the Argentine investigation there are two antecedents that are linked to the Avia Terai plane. The first is from the end of last year when a plane of the Chaco aeroclub, valued at 118 million pesos, was stolen in the early hours of Christmas. According to the aircraft's internal GPS, it was taken to Bolivia.
The most recent incident is in January, when five people died after the plane they had stolen from the aeroclub in the Chaco city of Villa Angela fell.
EMJ
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