Uruguayan national Sebastián Marset Cabrera, 35, allegedly turned Paraguay into an operational base for his international drug trafficking network between 2020 and 2021, according to the U.S. Justice Department's indictment. The structure, which coordinated Bolivian and Paraguayan mobs, stockpiled, concealed, and exported large volumes of cocaine hydrochloride to countries in Europe and Africa.
The route began in the air: Bolivian-registered light aircraft crossed the border and landed on a clandestine airstrip at the Cabrera-Timané Nature Reserve in Bahía Negra, in the Paraguayan Chaco. The site featured an airfield without authorization from the Dirección Nacional de Aeronáutica Civil (Dinac). After unloading, logistics were coordinated through an internal air route led by Paraguayan pilot Gilberto Sandoval, with communication via ground-to-air radios.
The main stockpile center was the San Agustín ranch in the department of Presidente Hayes, registered under the name of Hugo González Ramos, who is wanted under Operation A Ultranza. The property had a hangar and a clandestine airstrip surrounded by water channels, equipped with powerful floodlights for nighttime landings. From there, the cocaine — internally referred to as "premio" — followed two routes.
Part of it was flown to the Agroganadera Nuevo Horizonte ranch in San Estanislao, owned by Miguel Ángel Insfrán, known as Tío Rico, Marset's main ally in Paraguay. The remainder was transported in heavy-duty trucks belonging to Porvenir SA and Barajah SRL, front companies owned by Insfrán, heading toward the Central Department. In urban warehouses, the drug was concealed within legitimate shipments of soy flour and blue leather, packed into containers that were shipped by boat through the river ports of Villeta.
At least four shipments managed to move 17,340 kilograms of pure cocaine, bypassing the controls of a country that, according the indictment, opened its doors to them. Marset, who remained a fugitive for several years, was arrested on March 13 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and immediately extradited to the United States.
The Uruguayan is scheduled to appear before a U.S. federal court on July 1 and may reach a deal to reduce his sentence. So far, he faces a charge of money laundering conspiracy, but prosecutors are studying expanding the indictment to include other offenses. The current charges cover a period of approximately two years, involving money laundering outside the United States, specifically in South America and Western Europe, using the U.S. financial system.
If convicted of money laundering conspiracy, Marset faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, plus a fine that could exceed $500,000. Prosecutors have already gathered 22 gigabytes of evidence against him, a volume equivalent to 4 million pages of text, including extensive electronic communications in Spanish and Portuguese obtained from servers abroad.