On October 9, Paraguayan authorities announced the capture of Miguel Ángel Servín, leader of a narcotrafficking organization involved in containerized cocaine shipments to Europe and the Middle East, the Paraguayan National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD, in Spanish) said in a statement. According to SENAD, authorities had been investigating Servín for years before capturing him in the Villa Morra area, Asunción, and that he likely had connections with the First Capital Command (PCC, in Portuguese) — one of Brazil’s largest criminal organizations — in the drug trafficking business.
“The investigations identify him as chief and financier and, at the same time, responsible for coordinating and supervising large cocaine shipments by river from Paraguay to other continents,” SENAD said.
SENAD added that Servín was directly involved in the shipment of 2,331 kilograms of cocaine that were bound for Israel, in October 2020, from a port on the banks of the Paraguay River. It was a record seizure for the Paraguayan National Police that year.
In August 2021, Servín’s brother Denis Servín, alias Pimienta, was murdered in Ponta Porã, Brazil, during a fight between narcotraffickers, SENAD said. On October 12, the Paraguayan newspaper Última Hora reported that Pimienta was a member of the PCC.
Following Servín’s arrest, Paraguayan authorities detained his wife and daughter, as well as four other people, for being members of the criminal organization, the statement said.
During one of the operations to dismantle the criminal group, SENAD agents conducted procedures at a high-end automobile dealership and at a hunting and fishing sports business, both in the metropolitan area.
“In both places, [authorities] seized a significant number of high-end vehicles and yachts, which are allegedly part of the wealth forged through the laundering of narcotrafficking proceeds,” SENAD said.
“Through this stealthy work, we were able to conclude who was the head of the organization. We have all the structure that is involved in [drug] trafficking, [and] also the structure that serves as a support for laundering these illicit earnings,” Marco Alcaraz, deputy prosecutor of the Office of the Attorney General’s Specialized Unit against Narcotrafficking, told Última Hora.