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ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — Agentes encubiertos se adentraron en una casa de ladrillo en un barrio residencial.
El edificio, secretamente alquilado por la Administración para el Control de Drogas de Estados Unidos, se convirtió en la sede de una de las investigaciones sobre tráfico de drogas más importantes de América Latina. Sin embargo, las cosas no iban bien.
Un puñado de agentes estadounidenses y paraguayos habían sido asignados para encontrar al hombre en el centro de un nuevo cartel de drogas transnacional que enviaba cargamentos de cocaína a Europa. Aislados del resto de la policía para evitar filtraciones, después de meses de trabajo aún sabían poco sobre su objetivo, excepto que era peligroso y tenía buenas conexiones.
Entonces, un día en 2021, los agentes recibieron una pista. El hombre en el centro del nuevo cartel estaba a punto de abordar un jet privado en el Aeropuerto Internacional Silvio Pettirossi, justo fuera de Asunción, la capital.
Parte dos de una historia de dos partes
(Policía nacional de Uruguay; iStock)
Esta es la segunda parte de una serie de dos partes. Haz clic en este enlace para leer la primera parte, “Una doble vida: El capo de la cocaína que se escondía como un jugador de fútbol profesional.”.
“It was like a group of mafiosos had descended on us.”
A surveillance photo of Marset’s Lamborghini taken outside the Rubio Ñu soccer stadium in Asunción, Paraguay. (Paraguay Office of the Attorney General; iStock)
Within a few weeks of Marset’s arrival, he hired a construction team to build a new locker room. This time, he practiced with the team, but didn’t play in games.
After practice, he deployed the same anodyne one-liners that he used in texts to the drug traffickers who worked for him:
“Always be one step ahead my bro,” he wrote.
Marset appointed his brother Diego Marset as an intermediary between his drug-trafficking organization and the team, investigators said. Diego went on a recruiting spree, adding 11 veteran players. He could not be reached for comment.
The agents realized that as Sebastián Marset moved between soccer teams, he was also playing with ways the sport could be used to turn illicit funds into clean cash. He was expanding, they wrote in a 500-page Paraguayan report, “the universe of soccer within his money laundering scheme.”
At Rubio Ñu, investigators noted, Marset’s focus was on buying and selling players — one of the oldest forms of laundering money through sport.
Officials at Rubio Ñu declined to comment.
It would later become clear what Marset had in mind, according to investigators: He identified a team in Europe with its own connections to transnational crime. He would sell his Paraguayan players there. Transferring Latin American players to middling European teams for inflated fees — fronted by the seller, not the buyer, or by recording fake transactions — has become an increasingly common way of laundering drug money, officials say.
“They buy a Colombian player from a very low-level soccer team and then take him to play in the Croatian Soccer League. But they sell him for 100 times or 200 times more than what he cost,” said a Colombian police official, referring to one case in which Albanian drug traffickers laundered money through soccer transfers, providing cash for the transaction.
By August 2021, the American and Paraguayan investigators were getting closer to arresting their target. They had come up with a name for their investigation, “A Ultranza,” which means “At All Costs.” It was already the biggest anti-narcotics investigation in Paraguay’s history. They had enough documentation to produce at least 50 indictments targeting Marset and his associates, investigators said.
Then in September 2021, Marset vanished again.
The Americans received fresh intelligence: He was no longer hiding in Paraguay. He had evaded the surveillance. This time, he had left the continent.
III
When the Uruguayan diplomat stepped through the high walls of Al Wathba prison, surrounded by the Emirati desert, he explained to guards that he had come for a consular visit with a new detainee from his country.
The guards asked for the prisoner’s name.
“Marset,” the diplomat said, before walking into the holding cell.
Marset was sleeping on the floor of the prison with a blanket, in solitary confinement, according to an Uruguayan diplomatic cable.
One of the world’s most elusive drug traffickers had finally been caught. But it hadn’t been for trafficking drugs. Marset was detained at the Dubai airport, where authorities said he had used a fake Paraguayan passport.
“He had finally slipped up,” said a Paraguayan official.
U.S. officials made a case to their Emirati counterparts: If they didn’t strictly enforce his detention until an arrest warrant could be issued by Paraguay, Marset would bribe or finagle his way out of custody.
They were right. From his prison cell, Marset began a campaign to obtain a new passport and secure his release, an effort later documented by Uruguayan and Paraguayan authorities. For reasons that remain unclear, Paraguay was unable or unwilling to issue an arrest warrant after learning of Marset’s detention.
The Uruguayan government, meanwhile, recognized Marset as a threat but also failed to prevent his release.
“A narco,” Uruguay’s chief consul, Pauline Davies, wrote of Marset in a WhatsApp message to the country’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Álvaro Ceriani, on Sept. 21. The message was part of a trove of documents collected by Uruguayan investigators and provided to The Washington Post.
“A very dangerous and heavy drug trafficker,” Guillermo Maciel, Uruguay’s deputy interior minister, wrote to Carolina Ache, the country’s deputy foreign minister on Nov. 3.
Marset hired high-profile lawyers who arranged meetings with senior Uruguayan officials, documents show. The team was well-connected: Marset’s top legal adviser, Alejandro Balbi, was the president of Nacional, one of the country’s most famous soccer clubs. Balbi declined to comment.
Marset applied for a new Uruguayan passport to be delivered to him in Dubai.
By November, despite the warnings about the danger he posed, the new passport was being processed. Neither Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry nor its Interior Ministry, which grants passports, intervened, according to Uruguayan investigators.
While he waited to be released, using a phone he had obtained, Marset sought revenge.
He allegedly ordered gunmen to kill Mauricio Schwartzman, the man responsible for securing the Paraguayan passport that had landed Marset in prison, investigators said. 3, 2022, Marset was extradited from Dubai to the United States to face trial on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. His defense lawyer, in court filings, argued that Marset had been in Dubai to explore business opportunities and had no involvement in the crimes of which he was accused.
But U.S. prosecutors presented evidence linking Marset to at least 40 tons of cocaine shipments to Europe and the United States. They said Marset used his connections in Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil to move drugs across South America and then launder the profits through real estate investments in Dubai.
“Marset was the linchpin of a vast and sophisticated criminal enterprise,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “His arrest and extradition are a significant victory in the fight against transnational organized crime.”
In Paraguay, the news of Marset’s extradition was met with relief and satisfaction. But questions remained about the chain of events that had led to Schwartzman’s killing, Pecci’s assassination, and the brief, strange chapter of Trikala F.C.
As investigators pieced together the puzzle, they found that Marset’s criminal empire had tentacles that reached far beyond South America, with connections to Europe, the Middle East, and even a small soccer club in central Greece.
The case of Sebastián Marset, they realized, was not just a story of drugs and violence but also of ambition, greed, and the lengths some would go to achieve power and wealth.
Instead, he had inserted himself into the public eye, playing soccer in front of fans and reporters. And he was thriving. The Leones del Torno were winning games, and Marset was scoring goals. His presence in Bolivia was not a secret — it was a spectacle.
But Villegas, the Colombian forward, was the first to connect the dots. And once he did, he couldn’t keep it to himself.
“It was like a movie,” Villegas said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
VIII
On July 1, 2023, the Leones were playing against Club Atlético Rosario, a team from a nearby town, in front of a packed stadium in Santa Cruz.
Villegas was sitting on the bench, watching the game unfold. The Leones were losing, and frustration was mounting. But then, in the second half, Marset made a play that changed everything.
He dribbled past two defenders, cut inside, and unleashed a powerful shot that rocketed into the top corner of the net. The crowd erupted in cheers.
But Villegas wasn’t celebrating. He was reeling.
He knew he had to act.
IX
Villegas waited until after the game, until the fans had filed out of the stadium and the players had retreated to the locker room.
He approached Marset, who was still basking in the glow of his goal-scoring heroics. Villegas took a deep breath and spoke.
“Sebastián, we need to talk,” he said.
Marset’s whereabouts remain unknown, but his wife’s detention has raised hopes that he may soon be captured. The saga of Sebastián Marset, the drug lord who evaded authorities and taunted them from hiding, continues to captivate the public and law enforcement agencies across Latin America.
As the search for Marset intensifies, the question remains: Will the elusive drug lord be brought to justice, or will he continue to outsmart those pursuing him?
“Ella estaba cansada de huir de un crimen que no cometió”, dijo.
Marset sigue prófugo, siendo el objetivo de una búsqueda en curso, una de las más extensas en la historia reciente de América del Sur.
Moratorio compartió un detalle de la visita que hizo con el periodista a la ubicación no revelada de Marset.
Antes de que se grabara la entrevista televisiva, Moratorio dijo que Marset dio una orden más: Vamos a jugar un poco de fútbol. Sus visitantes, guardias y asociados formaron dos equipos y el partido comenzó.
Esta es la segunda parte de una serie de dos. Haz clic en este enlace para leer la primera parte, “Una doble vida: El capo de la cocaína que se escondía como futbolista profesional”.
Acerca de esta historia
Diseño y desarrollo por Kathleen Rudell-Brooks y Yutao Chen. Edición por Peter Finn, Reem Akkad, Jennifer Samuel y Joseph Moore. Edición de video por Jon Gerberg. Investigación por Cate Brown. Corrección de estilo por Anne Kenderdine y Martha Murdock.
Lucas Silva en Montevideo, Uruguay; Aldo Benítez en Asunción; Elinda Labropoulou en Atenas; Yiannis Tsakarisianos en Trikala, Grecia; Samantha Schmidt en Bogotá, Colombia; y Fernando Durán Arancibia en Santa Cruz, Bolivia, contribuyeron a este reportaje.
Créditos para la ilustración principal: Ilustraciones por Kathleen Rudell Brooks/The Washington Post; Ministerio del Interior de Uruguay; Policía nacional de Bolivia; Investigadores paraguayos; Policía nacional de Uruguay; iStock; Video: Sebastián Marset; Asociación de Fútbol Cruceña; TikTok/@ktm_paxor; Policía nacional de Bolivia.
The Washington Post revisó registros de propiedad del Departamento de Tierras de Dubai, así como empresas de servicios públicos de propiedad pública, para confirmar que Marset era dueño de propiedades en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos. Los datos fueron obtenidos por el Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Defensa (C4ADS), una organización sin fines de lucro con sede en Washington, D.C., que investiga el crimen y conflicto internacionales, y compartidos con el medio financiero noruego E24 y el Proyecto de Reportaje sobre Crimen Organizado y Corrupción (OCCRP), que coordinó un proyecto de investigación con docenas de medios de comunicación en todo el mundo. Puedes obtener más información sobre la colaboración en #DubaiUnlocked.