The murder of businessman Mauricio Daniel Schuartzman Parnes, who was executed outside his home in Asunción on September 12, 2021, exposed the overlap between two investigations into the same international cocaine-trafficking and money-laundering structure. Five months later, that convergence helped make Operation A Ultranza possible, and the operation was launched on February 22, 2022.
Schuartzman, who was 52, arrived at his home in the Jara neighborhood at 11:26 p.m. after a tennis match. As he was parking his white BMW X6, two gunmen armed with a pistol and a rifle opened fire. A third participant was waiting in a car. The attack lasted 29 seconds; before the execution, a court security guard and a friend of the victim had been taken hostage so they would not intervene.
At the time, then-Interior Minister Arnaldo Giuzzio publicly said the crime was linked to drug trafficking. The statement reflected information already circulating in police investigations, although it was still being treated as confidential.
The investigation was initially assigned to the Organized Crime Unit, then made up of prosecutors Marcelo Pecci, Alicia Sapriza, Lorenzo Lezcano and Federico Delfino, by decision of then-Attorney General Sandra Quiñónez. Lezcano said he was already investigating Schuartzman in Operation Smart, conducted with the participation of the Tripartite Command, the police structure that coordinates cooperation among Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina in the Tri-Border Area.
At the same time, anti-drug prosecutor Deny Yoon Pak and agents from the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (Senad), under Zully Rolón’s command, were investigating the same network in Operation A Ultranza. The work brought together messages, wiretaps, monitoring of cocaine shipments bound for Europe, the identification of runways and aircraft, and an inventory of assets attributed to the suspects.
Both lines of inquiry pointed to an organization allegedly led by Uruguayan Sebastián Marset, known as “Omelet,” and Paraguayan Miguel Ángel Insfrán Galeano, “Tío Rico.” After meetings among the institutions, it was decided that Senad and the anti-drug unit would take charge because they were further along. The operation was carried out five months later.
The main investigative hypothesis is that Schuartzman was killed on Marset’s orders. Messages from the Sky ECC platform, intercepted by Europol and forwarded to Paraguay, reportedly indicated that the businessman had helped obtain a false Paraguayan passport used by the Uruguayan. Marset was arrested in the United Arab Emirates after the document was discovered, and investigators suspect the murder was retaliation.
That motive continues to be presented as a theory based on the evidence gathered by the authorities, rather than as a definitive judicial conclusion. The case also acquired historical significance because prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, who was part of the initially assigned team, was murdered in Colombia in May 2022, a few months after A Ultranza was launched.