← The Underworld Podcast
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- [00:00]
Sean Williams
Mom, can you tell me a story?
- [00:02]
Danny Gold
Sure.
- [00:02]
Sean Williams
Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave?
- [00:05]
Danny Gold
She was tired mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required.
- [00:12]
Sean Williams
Did you have to fight a dragon?
- [00:13]
Ad Voice / Karina B. Mr. Fur
Nope.
- [00:14]
Sean Williams
She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof?
- [00:22]
Danny Gold
It did, actually.
- [00:23]
Sean Williams
Okay, good story.
- [00:24]
Ad Voice / Karina B. Mr. Fur
Car buying you'll want to tell stories about.
- [00:26]
Sean Williams
Buy your car today on Carvana.
- [00:29]
Danny Gold
Delivery fees may apply.
- [00:30]
Ad Voice / Karina B. Mr. Fur
The the jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Mr. Fur. And every single day on Morning cup of Murder, I bring you a real chilling true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal brothers to the the boy scout who was obsessed with the occult. And the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin, these aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think. How have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, Morning cup of Murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a Morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And Remember, stay safe.
- [01:32]
Sean Williams
August 28, 2018 around 2:00pm Ciudad del Este. The second largest city in the Latin American nation of Paraguay. Home to half a million people, the city is perched on a bend of the Parana river that marks the border between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The so called triple frontier, best known for its spectacular Iguazu Falls, a tourist hotspot welcoming over a million people each year. The falls, though they're split between Argentina and Brazil, almost no tourist comes to Ciudad del Este. And it shows. The city is an awkward tangle of glass fronted highrise, half finished homes and shopping malls. Over a dozen shopping malls, many of them brand spanking new and stuffed full of electronics and luxury goods you'd never find in Asuncion, Paraguay's sleepy capital. But it's not just cheap TVs and Chanel passing through Ciudad del Este. The city has been a smuggler's paradise, going all the way back to 1957, when it was founded and named for Paraguay's brutal dictator as Puerto Presidente Strozna. Back then, the city's cash cow was black market cigarettes, billions of them, that propped up Paraguay's Tin Pot regime. Then it welcomed Hong Kong triads and even Lebanese militants, turning the place into an unlikely melting pot of organized crime and global Islamist terror. The dictator fell and the city got a modern, anodyne name. But crime kept coming, particularly a cocaine industry slipping through the cracks of every country on the continent by 2018. It is said that if you spend a day besides the International Friendship Bridge that connects Ciudad del Este with Brazil, you're likely to see drugs and other contraband trademark transported as openly as if they were shirts or kids toys. Diego Medina, however, he operates a little more cannily than that. On this particular August afternoon, hot and stickier than a spill at a syrup factory, Medina is in Ciudad del Este putting the final touches on his silver Fiat truck Before setting out on a 200 mile plus journey west to Asuncion. Medina tamps down the Fiat's back seat and slams it shut. Then he fires up his engine and sets off towards the capital. If Medina makes good time, he'll be there before sunset. But around halfway there, cops stop Medina at a checkpoint. Officers search the Fiat and discover a false bomb in a compartment under the backseat. They rip it open. Inside is almost $200,000 in cash. What's this for? They ask Medina. No answer. The cops haul him off to a nearby police station. There, Medina calls his boss, Rinaldo Cabana Santa Cruz, a notorious drug trafficker better known as El Cucho. No sooner has Cuccio hung up on Medina than he makes a second call, this time to the man Medina was delivering the cash to, goateed, musclebound, an up and comer in the region's underworld who also happens to be a Paraguayan congressman. The two men speak with an informality that suggests they've known each other for a while. Is everything clean? The congressman asks Cuccio, or does it need to be covered up? Not everything was clean, Cucho tells him. The congressman dispatches two lawyers to the station holding Modena. One of them, a Ciudad del Este public prosecutor, hands the officer in charge $6,000. Moments later, Medina is a free man. He gets back in the Fiat and continues his journey to Asuncion. Drama over? No. In fact, it's only just beginning. Before long, the sordid details of this so called Belero case will come tumbling out into the media. It'll show how, if anything, narco trafficking in Paraguayan politics has grown even closer than the days when President Alfredo Stroessner hosted heroin kingpins, future fugitive nazis and ousted despots Medina Cuccio and their friend in Congress. They'll all catch the polish wood smell of a courthouse over the coming months and years. And the triple frontier, well, that's getting so out of hand that United States will end up sending in the army. Welcome to the Underworld podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly audio visual experience where two seasoned reporters pick apart the weird and wonderful world of global organized crime. I am Sean Williams, a British freelance writer reporter based ordinarily out of Buenos Aires. And I'm joined by American filmmaker in the Tri state area's foremost Sopranos expert, Danny Gold. We are to the special relationship what tacos and telenovelas are to Mexico. Or what I know sex crimes and apology tours are to washed up rappers.
- [06:36]
Danny Gold
What an intro, but also a correction. I don't really make films anymore and I think in the last episode we got called out. You said something about B52s in World War II. Those didn't exist then. I think you meant B25s. The airplane guys left a lot of comments. They were not, not happy. I mean, it's not like you called a humvee or an A.P.C. a tank, right?
- [06:58]
Sean Williams
That.
- [06:59]
Danny Gold
That's something people get really mad about. But yeah, I don't know. Not. I had to issue a correction on that one.
- [07:06]
Sean Williams
And then also yes, my apologies.
- [07:07]
Danny Gold
I'm not gonna let you get away with saying hot and stickier than a spill at a serif factory.
- [07:12]
Sean Williams
No. Oh, okay. I'm gonna keep slipping increasingly bad puns and metaphors and similes into the intro. So yeah, we can look out for that next week's show. Anyway, yes, sorry, sorry. Airplane Men and women. Well, no, it's men, isn't it? Sorry to the Airplane men. I got my B52s and my 25s mixed up. Forgive me. Anyway, moving on, I say I'm novel in Buenos Aires today. I'm coming to you from what I sure you agree is a stunning hotel room in Lima, Peru, where I'm tracking down a bunch of stuff. Next week it's Bolivia, where I'm putting together a doco style show for for this show to air in a few weeks. So send your regional food recce and story tips our way. The Underworld podcast, gmail.com. don't forget to like and subscribe. Wherever you're listening to this episode, check out the website underworldpod.com for merch and past shows. And sign up to the Patreon if you want to get notes. Ad free shows, stash houses and interviews. And soon, I believe TV and movie watch alongs with Adele, who is, yeah, way cooler than him. Or and soon TV and movie watch alongs with our editor Dale, who is cooler and more interesting than both of us combined.
- [08:24]
Danny Gold
Yeah, that's patreon.com norworldpodcast or sign up on Spotify, iTunes or YouTube for those bonus episodes. And ad free and all that good stuff.
- [08:32]
Sean Williams
Yeah, I'm meeting a guy who went out to the Amazon tonight and he met a bunch of indigenous guys fighting cartels in the jungle. So that'd be a cool one. That'll be going up soon anyway, if you haven't already listened to it. I did a show on Paraguay a couple of weeks back that got into its wild history. The repressive dictatorship of President Alfredo Stroessner which pays Germany to shame and the country's punchant, you say? I don't know. Pension. Yeah. Penchant. Okay. Good for smuggled Nazis and narcos particularly. Auguste recalled a French Corsican mobster who led the importation of so called French Connection heroin all the way from Southeast Asia and Turkey into the port of Marseille and onwards through Latin America into the United States.
- [09:14]
Danny Gold
Yeah, I think if there's one thing listeners of the show know you love, it's South American Nazis who, who also traffic drugs. If it's two things, it's Chinese guys who set up compounds to send text message scams. If someone actually ever combined the two like you would just, you would absolutely lose it. You dedicate your life to just doing episodes on that over and over and over.
- [09:35]
Sean Williams
Yeah, I mean, I do that already, but yeah, I'll do that more if I find Chinese Nazis in the Amazon making scams. That'd be great. Anyway, we're going to be doing more on the triple frontier in later episodes, unpicking how it's become by some measures the most lawless place on earth. It is insane. But today I'm going to focus on the Paraguayan part of the equation because it is A mad and B, still pretty fresh in my memory after traveling there a few weeks ago. But we left that first show back in 1972. That is the year in which August records true identity and location in Paraguay, is outed by an American journalist. Paraguay then throws record in jail. But White House pressure on Stroessner to extradite the Frenchman fails. Stroessner doesn't even give up. Recall when his small nation is dubbed the quote, harrowing crossroads of South America by the Washington Post. Nor when that summer, the US Embassy in Asuncion cancels its Fourth of July party for Paraguayan officials for the first time in over a century. Oh, no. No. What? Green bean casserole for the Paraguayans. Stroessner knows full well how much Record's drug money is holding back a coup, quite possibly, therefore, his own murder. Furthermore, Record has enjoyed the protection of regime officials for years, none of them more so than General Andres Rodriguez, Stroessner's brother in law and one of the country's most powerful men. Rodriguez makes an official $300 per month salary, but he also owns one of Asuncion's most luxurious villas, occupying an entire city block, plus tennis and squash courts, an indoor pool and an outdoor pool. He is, by the way, quite a fat man. He'd made early bank running currency exchange houses, but in recent years had taken a commanding role in Paraguay's marijuana fields, it's cocaine trade and its booming illegal cigarette trade. More on that last one later. In any case, Rodriguez appears to be Stroessner's point man for record, and he doesn't want to give up on him.
- [11:31]
Danny Gold
I mean, it's. It's his brother in law, man. That's. That's family, Sean.
- [11:35]
Sean Williams
It's family. Nothing, nothing runs thicker than. No, people are thicker than family. I don't know how that phrase goes. Anyway, says one Brazilian official, quote, record was the paymaster. He has all the photos, stats of the checks he made out to people for services and protection. If anything happens to him, the friends will make copies of the checks that were sent to foreign bank accounts, and many people will be unhappy. Some reporters even visit Record in his small Asuncion jail. His role in the French Connection, Record tells them, is, quote, a lie made up by the Americans. Their government is rotten from top to bottom, and they have chosen to make me the victim of an absurd plot involving drugs. If they want to stop the drug business, let them put their officials in jail. That is top tier FIFA Peace Prize winning projection there, folks. Anyway, President Nixon at the White House, he is having none of this. And like we went into last time, he finally gets Stroessner to hand over his boy. After threatening to pull 5 million DOL dollars in aid to little Paraguay, Record is flown into New York, demolished in court and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Quickly, before we move on, Record serves 10 of those 20 years in a Missouri prison before having his Term commuted and returning to Paraguay in 1983, by which time he is riddled with cancer, mute and confined to a wheelchair. Record dies two years later in 1985. The French connection has been fully dismantled. By now, Record stated as one of the world's most notorious narco traffickers, has been totally eclipsed by the brutal rise Pablo Escobar and Medellin. But thanks to the Oscar winning movie, the French Connection, starring Gene Hackman, record status gets a late boost and he dies something of a legend rather than the pretty low life Nazi pimp scumbag he's been from day one. That's it for record. The rest of this episode is going to be a kind of how to if you want to build a lawless state within a state. How Paraguay has continued to become this mad free for all world west of Latin America since. How his politics has underwritten an avalanche of organized crime, drugs, scam, terror networks. All of it channeled through the triple frontier. And all of it leading up to the Perido case from the cold open. Oh, and that being at least partly to blame for this, President Pena of Paraguay is here. President.
- [13:48]
Danny Gold
President.
- [13:49]
Sean Williams
Thank you very much. Young, handsome guy.
- [13:52]
Danny Gold
But this is the most prestigious board ever put together. You know, I've seen some great corporate boards. It's always nice to be young and handsome.
- [14:01]
Sean Williams
Doesn't mean we have to like you.
- [14:03]
Danny Gold
I don't like young, handsome men.
- [14:07]
Sean Williams
Women like men. Know, I don't have any interest. Just a wholesome budding bromance there. Battling cartels and palling out on Paraguayan President Santiago's Pena's dashing good looks.
- [14:20]
Danny Gold
You know, honestly, I don't see it. He's like, handsome, sure, in like a classical, like, sitcom dad kind of way, but, like, fairly plain. I don't know. Maybe you're into it more than I am. Shane, I. I just don't. I don't. I don't know. It's not for me.
- [14:32]
Sean Williams
I mean, he just looks like any Spanish man, doesn't he? Maybe. I mean, that's it. Maybe that's. That's what it takes. But anyway.
- [14:38]
Danny Gold
Wow.
- [14:40]
Sean Williams
Oh, sorry.
- [14:41]
Danny Gold
They all look the same. They all look the same to you, huh?
- [14:43]
Sean Williams
No. Some of them also have dreadlocks and play Manu Chao songs at rst in Berlin. But anyway, how do we get to the point of this strange friendship? Well, let's go back to the 1970s, 1975, in fact. What was recorded is locked up in the States and Alfredo Stroessner, albeit stung by his acquiescence to The White House is still very much in charge of his small corrupt state. But robbed of one of his biggest criminal cash cows, Paraguay is about to get as fruity as any nation in seeking out a new illicit income. On April 5, 1975, longtime Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai Shek, no stranger to the narco scene himself, you can check out previous episodes, suffers a massive heart attack and he dies. Age 87. Chang Tsun takes control of the island, aka the Republic of China. Three years later. But as happens, Withinepo Baby takes over his daddy's business. The folks below him, in this case a gaggle of ruthless war weary military bigwigs, jostle for position. One of them is Taiwan spymaster General Wang Shen. A wily operator, bald head, looks a bit like a Chinese Jean Luc Picard.
- [15:53]
Danny Gold
Oh God. Are we going to go into the intricacies of the late 20th century Taiwanese political intrigue as well?
- [15:58]
Sean Williams
No, fear not. Don't worry, we'll be skipping through this. It might be tough to imagine these days, Danny, but in the mid-70s, Taiwan is a pretty hard boiled dictatorship kept in check by Wang's secret police. But the general, he makes a huge misstep. In 1983, he travels to the US to have meetings with some of his intelligence counterparts, angling for them to back him when he makes his move on Chang the younger. But he gets found out and as punishment, the regime dispatches him to, yep, you guessed it, little Paraguay. Wang isn't too pleased about this. But he says, I'm still a military man. I obey orders. If you tell me to go, if those are the President's orders, I will obey. And that is a line I tell all of my editors for every story. In November 1983, Wang touches down in Asuncion what one biographer of Wang calls a godforsaken Timbuktu. A back war. In other words, sorry Malians catching strays there. But as communist China grows in stature and exiles Taiwan from global diplomacy, Wang makes sure that Paraguay and President Stroessner remain the island's greatest supporters in Latin America. To do so, he focuses on Paraguay's 7,000 or so Chinese immigrants, among the country's only entrepreneurs. As foreigners, they're often prey to the kinds of theft and extortion that are commonplace on Paraguay's rough streets. So Wang gets to work. He turns, quote, flaccid Chinese organizations into full blown guilds. I think you can go to stores of Chinese stuff to do that as well. Today these so called friendship groups keep the Chinese safe from shakedowns.
- [17:35]
Danny Gold
I just realized I missed your wang. Flaccid, like there was something there. We could have, we could have.
- [17:41]
Sean Williams
I'm surprised you actually know capitalized Wang. I kind of. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I went halfway there, but you really should have gone for it.
- [17:47]
Danny Gold
It's a little low. It's a little like lowest con, common denominator, but okay. These friendship groups, are these, are we talking tongs, triad? Some combination of the two?
- [17:56]
Sean Williams
Yeah, I mean they don't belong, they don't start out as that. They start out as kind of just programs for keeping together the Chinese business communities. But you know, these so called friendship groups, we've seen them in countless shows about the CCP gangsters. Just like the one from Palau a few weeks ago. Yeah, you're right. These kind of organizations, the tongs, for example, are perfect Trojan horses for triad groups. Especially when Wang unveils a plan to sell 5,000 Hong Kong Chinese around Puerto Presidente Strozna, aka Ciudad del Este. Working across the borders of the Triple Frontier, their place of origin, Hong Kong is a cause for concern as drug trafficking in addition to other illicit activities has increased significantly in recent years, writes Argentine newspaper la Nacion in 1985. That same year, the New York Times reports that despite President Strossen's claims to be cleaning up Paraguay, he is still very much back at his bullshit. In particular, the Times reveals that high ranking Paraguayan officials are directly involved in cocaine trafficking, especially through the Triple Frontier. So a little context here. In the 1970s, the Latin American cocaine trade had mostly been steered from Bolivia by coca farmers corralled by Roberto Suarez Gomez, the so called King of cocaine, who had worked with Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie to turn Andean coca leaves into powder and onto the United States. I did a two parter on that back in I think December 2024. It's fascinating and ongoing obsession of mine as everyone now knows. Suarez, by the way, he's the inspiration for the character of Sosa from Scarface.
- [19:34]
Danny Gold
And Sosa importantly is the inspiration for Chief Keef.
- [19:37]
Sean Williams
Very importantly, yeah. Ruthless, ruthless guy. Chief Keefe. No wait, I'm talking about Sosa. And Chief Keef is doing great these days.
- [19:45]
Danny Gold
Have you ever, have you seen him? Crazy Greek billionaire, got him out of Chicago like for years. I don't think he takes drugs anymore like before. I think he like when he was like 16, besides creating, you know, incredible rap songs, struggled to put a sense together and now he's like a very rudite like well spoken guy. He's living his best life. And I'm pretty happy for. I mean, the others happened to those other guys, like Dirk and them, you know, done. But he's. He's doing great, so, you know, good for you, Chief Keef. I'm glad you made it out.
- [20:15]
Sean Williams
And a valuable ray of sunshine in this dark, dark episode. Yes. I didn't think I was going to get it from Chief Keef, but there we go. In 1982, Barbie helps connect Suarez with a young up and coming Colombian called Pablo Escobar, whose Medellin cartel is on the way to becoming the world's biggest narco story, possibly ever. And by 1985, when Paraguay is re upping on its massive drug trafficking status, the Colombians are by far the biggest force in Latin American organized crime. They've got Colombian left wing guerrillas, M19 and the FARC helping them evade justice. And Escobar is an anarcho terror rampage through his own country, murdering officials and laying siege to the palace of justice in capital city Bogota. He's also got operatives all over the continent, corrupting officials and committing terrible acts of violence. In February 1985, for example, Brazil launches Operation Eccentric, which aims to flush the Colombians out of its borders. It does this with the American dea, which states that Eccentric will, quote, dismantle the Brazilian arm of the Colombian mafia. Brazilian cops don't bust much product throughout the operation. They do, however, seize more than 20,000 litres of chemicals used to refine the drugs, which they believe are being created in clandestine labs across the Parana river in Paraguay. That March. This theory gets a pretty decisive boost. A Brazilian businessman named Gilberto Yanez crashes his small engine plane in the Paraguayan jungle en route to Mexico. The plane is carrying 600 kilos of gear. But when soldiers discover the plane and surround it, they don't arrest Yanis or impound the coke. In fact, they shoot him dead, point blank. And the 600 keys mysteriously disappear. By this point, Ronald Reagan has just been sworn in for his second term as US President. Among his first foreign policy acts is to cut off Alfredo Stroessner, whose Timbalt regime is an embarrassment on Capitol Hill. More articles appear about Paraguay in US newspapers in 18 months than they had in the previous 30 years, digging into the country's growing reputation as a nest of narcos and violent criminals. The LA Times, for example, writes, the Stroessner's generals have become a, quote, gang of corrupt opportunists, while the New Republic calls Paraguay, quote, smuggler's paradise. Eventually, word gets to the producers of 60 Minutes. Whose presenter, Mike Wallace, describes Paraguay as, quote, a third world country ruled to 31 years by the most despised man and the most hated dictator in the world with a punching pension. Oh, God. Why have you said it, Mike? For sycophants and young girls. Oh, yeah. Strowstone likes them young. I mean, if you've listened to both these paragraphs, as I'm. I'm assuming you'd already guessed as much by 1988, Brazilian police named Paraguay as the key source of drugs into its domestic consumption market. Washington, meanwhile, has fully turned on Stroessner. It hopes to turn it from what one former ambassador to Asuncion calls, quote, the Mongolia of Latin America. I mean, Mongolia catching strays. A show about Paraguayan drug trafficking. Bit harsh. Have you ever wondered why we call
- [23:27]
Danny Gold
French fries French fries? Or why something is the greatest thing since sliced bread? There are answers to those questions. Everything Everywhere Daily is a podcast for curious people who want to learn more about the world around them. Every day you'll learn something new about things you never knew you didn't know. Subjects include history, science, geography, mathematics, and culture. If you're a curious person and want to learn more about the world you live in, just subscribe to Everything Everywhere Daily, wherever you cast your pod. For years, Gone south has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But for our new season, we're widening the lens. Through deeply reported, narrative driven stories, we're digging into the myths, scandals and power structures that still shape the south and in a lot of ways, the country itself. Follow and listen to gone South Season 5 An Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows. Yeah, what's so bad about Mongolia? They never hurt anyone. They always, it always seems nice. They ride a lot of. They ride those horses. They got those big ass eagles that they, you know, have on their wrists. I would love to go to Mongolia.
- [24:38]
Sean Williams
Yeah. Tents drinking camel milk. What's not to like?
- [24:41]
Danny Gold
I think it's fermented camel milk.
- [24:45]
Sean Williams
Tasty. D.C. is pretty sure that Stroessner's brother in law, General Rodriguez, is the head of cocaine trafficking in the country. But he's still the strongest candidate to succeed Stroessner, who by now has lost US support to the extent that the National Endowment for Democracy and an agent associated with the CIA is actively funding anti Stroessner movements across Paraguay. The US Embassy even tells the agent dictator that he no longer has their backing. Then, on February 2, 1989, it finally goes off. A long standing feud between Stroessner and Rodriguez erupts into a bloody coup d'. Etat. Rodriguez rolled his armoured division into Asuncion and tries to arrest Stroessner while he's having dinner at his mistress home.
- [25:31]
Danny Gold
You know, it's always the mistress that that brings him down. Usually the mistress is home. I mean, that's how they got El Mencho, right? So they, like a bunch of Hezbollah guys have gotten clapped like that. I mean, there's a lesson there, Sean, especially for you.
- [25:45]
Sean Williams
Yeah, eat dinner at 5pm Anyway, bodyguards of Strozn as they fight back. And a 700 strong battle breaks out right in the middle of the city. Stroessner escapes to Asuncion's army headquarters, but naval and artillery units show that too, causing Stroessner's boys to ditch their jefe and plead allegiance to Rodriguez. At 5pm the following day, Stroessner surrenders, by which time 31 men have been killed, although other estimates put it as high as 250. If we're going ratio of badness to life in exile, Stroessner is going to rank pretty high. Held power for 35 years, murdered thousands christened concentration camps and ran Paraguay into the dark dirt. Yet he jets off on a 707, gets asylum in Brazil and lives out his days in a lakefront LA villa in the capital city Brasilia, dying at the age of 93 on 2006. That is, that is on a par with Idi Amin. So the king is gone. Long live the king. Rodriguez opens up Paraguay a little, abolishing the death penalty. And he tears apart much of Stroessner's venal inner circle. Which is. Which is not a euphemism. Sorry. But the rampage of corruption and drugs continues, not least because Rodriguez is making bank of it enough that US government officials dub him, quote, the cocaine General. I should add at this point that Rodriguez, like Stroessner, heads the Colorado Party, which has been in power since Stroessner came to power in the 1950s. And it's still the party in control of the country today under Santiago Pena, Trump's sexy friend. Given what Stroessler did, this is all pretty insane, right? I mean, perhaps not quite as mad as the Khmer Rouge staying on after the genocide, but still crazy. It's like Hitler died and the Nazi party carried on leading Germany, was how one local reporter described it to me a few weeks ago. Rodriguez swears early in his tenure, quote, on what is most sacred as a Catholic, as a father, I swear it on my children. That it's got nothing to do with drugs. Somewhat contradictory though is the fact that under US pressure Rodriguez is forced to purge his anti narcotics squad, themselves implicated in the trade. A month after that, Rodriguez destroys a swath of land producing marijuana for the Brazilian market. Not that he had anything to do with it guys. He swore on his kids lives. Also early on, Rodriguez gets approached by the People's Republic of China to ditch Taiwan and open diplomatic relations with Beijing. But old General Wang still hanging out in Asuncion and what is now called Ciudad del Este. He persuades Rodriguez to keep Paraguay as one of the world's few nations on Taipei's side. And this helps build the power of those Hong Kong Chinese who came out in the mid-1980s. Rodriguez steps down in 1993 and he dies in 1997. By the year 2000 the CIA believes there are six Chinese triads in the Triple Frontier. And a quote vying for the 7,000 Chinese businesses in Ciudad del Este from whom they collect up to US$30,000 a month by exporting protection money.
- [28:48]
Danny Gold
Honestly I'd known about that area for quite a while. I knew the cartels, the PCC and Rangheta Hezbollah were active there, but did not know the triads were so heavy in it. Like this is. These guys are everywhere.
- [29:00]
Sean Williams
Deeply part of the story of it. Yeah. And like because these guys are doing that flying money, Chinese stuff, right, that we went into what a year ago. They there's just so much money laundering in the city, like tons of it. Money exchange houses pop up all over Ciudad del Este where there's seemingly little demand for them. But of course there is. And any criminal proceeds authorities from the us, Brazil or Argentina track back to the city where they quickly vanish. At this point Paraguay is such a sinkhole for illicit markets that even Japan's Yakuza try muscling in. I couldn't find find any evidence they'd managed to take any business from the Chinese. But still it just goes to show how crazy things are getting. Brazil's nascent PCC or the First Capital Command is beginning to use the Triple Frontier for its cocaine trafficking operations. As are Los Zetas, the Mexican cartel and the Chaco. Remember that Paraguay's vast scrubby forest, it's increasingly used to land planes carrying products or in some cases to conceal cocaine producing laboratories. And it's not just foreigners getting in on the act. If you remember from my last show on Paraguay, as far back as the early 1960s the country had been making massive stacks of cash, smuggling contraband cigarettes on military planes run by Stroess and his friends. In fact, at that time, Paraguay had been the world's largest importer of illicit cigarettes. By the early 2000s, this black market is still flying, excuse the pun. Paraguay now makes cigarettes rather than just ferries them about. Its factories churn out almost 70 billion of the things each year, and that's worth around a billion dollars. And around 90% of those disappear into the illegal market. Most, of course, get across the triple frontier into Brazil and Argentina. But knockoff Paraguayan cigarettes have showed up as far away as Ireland. And Paraguay, whose population is around 0.08% of the world's population, is responsible for 10% of the planet's contraband.
- [30:57]
Danny Gold
Tobacco can't be right, can it? Like what we talked about, a few episodes with Dubai, like that, that seems hard to believe. Maybe a while ago you would think
- [31:08]
Sean Williams
so, that I think it's still pretty big. It's definitely, definitely toned down for reasons that we're going to get into. But at this point in the early 2000s, it is gigantic. And there are a bunch of like really boring academic white papers about it, which I read so that none of you ever have to do. And that for that you should be saluting me. Anyway, in the 1980s, the kingpin of this cigarette trade had undoubtedly been General Rodriguez. But in the years following his death, the ban is passed on to Horacio Cartes, an Asuncian born businessman whose rise had begun with his purchase of a currency exchange in the early 1980s. Just like the old General Cartes had then got into aviation. But by the late 1990s, his Grupo Cartes has over 25 separate businesses, including interests in banking, transport, beverages, agriculture and more. He also owns a soccer club, because, of course. And he even at one point takes charge of the Paraguayan national team. The U.S. calls cartes, quote, unquote, significantly corrupt. And his tobacco firm, Tabesa, is by the turn of the millennium, knocking out almost 600 cigarettes per second from a massive factory on the outskirts of. Well, yeah, of course it is Ciudad del Este. Cartes is also a major political player, the key backer of the Colorado Party post Stroessner. And so entrenched in the scene, the Paraguayans will come to know his corrupt brand of operation as cartismo. There's rarely a Colorado lawmaker who doesn't get the Cartes seal of approval. And his followers even say they're from the, quote, HC faction of the party, which they claim means Honor Colorado, which actually just means Horacio Cartes. Like they're in the stone cutters or something. Drugs, cigarettes, triads. Little Ciudad del Este by the early 2000s, in the Premier League of the world's most lawless places, writes a researcher at the center for Public Integrity. Quote, the city's downtown is a bustling labyrinth of narrow streets cluttered with thousands of street stands, money exchange houses and shops where anything from exotic pets to AK47s can be obtained with almost equal ease. Late Model Mercedes and BMWs Sporting polarized windows rush by and scores of motor scooters, some of them transporting entire families with weave through the ubiquitous traffic jams in the Calle de los Cigaros, as locals have christened one of the city streets. Boxes of 8 tier rodeo Calvet, the smuggler's favorite brands, are stacked high along the sidewalk. Did you spot the massive journalist cliche in there? Anything from AK47s could be obtained with almost equal ease. It's like, what is it? The thing they say? It's like you can buy cocaine as easily as you can buy a, I don't know, pack of cigarettes. That's a great one. But to keep on top, you gotta keep innovating, Danny. Move fast and break things, you know.
- [34:10]
Danny Gold
Oh, I know. And you know, I know.
- [34:13]
Sean Williams
Yeah, I move very slowly, but I do break a lot of things. Ciudad del Este might be what one researcher calls, quote, a giant duty free store, but it needs more. It needs an X factor. How are you supposed to keep up with the Sinaloa's and the Shan states and the Albanias of the world if you're only a haven for contraband cigarettes, cocaine, heroin and cheap Chinese electronics? No, Ciudad del Este needs to find his fifth gear. Je ne sais quoi. And you know what? In the early 2000s, it finds it, Danny. It finds it. Good.
- [34:45]
Danny Gold
Can I guess? I'm going to guess a couple things. Wildlife trafficking, peptide manufacturing only, fans production, bootleg, messy jerseys.
- [34:56]
Sean Williams
I. I would guarantee there are plenty of messy jerseys. However, it goes in a slightly different direction. In September 2001, I don't know if you remember this. Some guys fly planes into these tall buildings in downtown Manor and I had to look it up, but apparently it was a pretty big deal. And guess which pokey little out American corner is becoming a key player in global Islamist terror. Yes, Ciudad del Este has it covered. It's ducking and rolling, sprinting for that prize of being the most lawless place on earth. And by Jove, I think it might just be pulling it off now. Actually, there shouldn't be anything Too surprising about this. Alfredo Strozna has been buddying up to top Nazis going back to the 1950s. Mengele, Pavlic, and their old friend August Record. Around that time, a small wave of Lebanese Muslims had also made their way to the country, followed by further influxes in the 1970s and the 1990s. The vast majority of these folks have nothing to do with militancy, of course, but Hezbollah, Lebanon's Shia paramilitary group, established themselves within Paraguay, especially Ciudad del Este, attracted by the city's easy access to guns and drug money, plus money laundering services operated by the Hong Kong triads.
- [36:09]
Danny Gold
Yeah, Hezbollah, I think in the late 80s, maybe more so in the 90s, really took aim at setting up these sort of international networks, especially involving like drug smuggling and money laundering. I think most famously in. In West Africa, right?
- [36:22]
Sean Williams
Yeah, there was that episode we did about Guinea Bissau from. From a few years back, and Hezbollah played a pretty big role there. I think they still do today as well.
- [36:31]
Danny Gold
Major trafficking networks.
- [36:32]
Sean Williams
Anyway, this flying money, the money laundering service, is something that the Chinese had already allegedly tried with an Egyptian militant group I'm not even going to try to name sending guns and ammo mislabeled as medical equipment and laundering the proceeds through their various shopping malls. But their connection to Hezbollah soon takes center stage. In 1992, a suicide bomber associated with Langbet Jihad, a Hezbollah proxy, blows up the Israeli embassy in buenos Aires, killing four Israelis and 25 Argentinians. Two years later, a car bomb explodes outside Amiyah, the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and it kills 86. Most agree that it too was orchestrated by Hezbollah, particularly a group based in the Triple Frontier.
- [37:18]
Danny Gold
Yeah, I think they actually found in the 2000s that it was financed or planned by Iran with Hezbollah. And famously, the prosecutor who was gonna present all this data, all this information, all the evidence on it died. He was also going to present that the Argentinian president at the time, Kirchner, was covering up those connections. At least the connections to Iran died the day he was supposed to present it to the Argentinian Congress. Allegedly murdered. I don't think they proven that it was murder, but it sure looks like murder. Yeah, and I don't think crazy that she covered it up, but there's a lot of evidence that allegedly with those two things, but there's a lot of evidence that. That points to both those things.
- [37:59]
Sean Williams
Yeah, definitely. I think it was Alberto Nisman was the prosecutor and he had a flat in Puerto Madero, which is like the flashest part of Buenos Aires. And I Think he was found dead with a bullet wound in the side of his head, but there was no residue on his hand and there was like a sign of a forced entry into a side door to the apartment. So yeah, he must have broken into his own home, stepped on his gun, laid on the floor. I don't know how he did it, but yeah, Kirshner was pretty, pretty heavily involved, but pretty much nothing has been solved around that even to today. Anyway, the leader of this group, the group that has supposedly orchestrated the whole Amiyr attack from the Triple Frontier, his name is Asad Ahmed Barakat, a Lebanese Paraguayan who shortly after the attacks is convicted of tax evasion and spends six years in a Paraguayan prison. Honestly, I do not know how you end up in jail for evading tax in Paraguay. But upon his release in 2008, Barakat continues to bolster his so called Barakat clan, moving between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina in the Triple Frontier and laundering an alleged $10 million through one casino on the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls. But if you launder your cash quietly through a casino on one side of the border on the Paraguayan side, you just buy a giant shopping mall, bringing in cheap Chinese goods, laundering the cash through local triad networks and exchange it for weapons, drugs, you name it. All for the Hezbollah cause the name of this place is the Galleria Pare. It sits a dubious quarter mile from the Brazilian border and it has been sanctioned by the US treasury not just for its connections to the Barakat clan, but also links to Brazil's cocaine trafficking, PCC and Hamas. Casa Hamza, a store within the mall, has even hired Hezbollah militants to, I don't know, service, iPhones. Infobuyer has a great series on this. Do check it out if you have the time, speak Spanish and don't mind low quality audio, which you probably don't mind actually if you're listening to this. In case you're wondering how closely intertwined the Lebanese and the Chinese are by this point, take two of Hezbollah's leading front businesses in Paraguay, Garden Shisha Charcoal and Master Nano King Argento cigarettes. Yeah, you get the message. I didn't even have to do an accent there. Oh, and an interesting side note, that Charcoal business is shipping cocaine inside charcoal destined for, get this, Israel.
- [40:27]
Danny Gold
Yeah, there's also pretty. I mean, I know people who were in. There's like heavy cocaine in Beirut too. Like they, they get it over there. But then also you have situations where the clans in the valley would smuggle hash into Israel using, I think, I mean, I don't think so much anymore. But they would use like Israeli Arabs and Bedouins and then I'm sure it was taken over by like Israeli organized crime to sell fascinating drug, drug stuff interwoven in those areas.
- [40:57]
Sean Williams
Yeah. Did that come up in the car bomb episode you did a few years back? Because that was like super interesting. If people haven't listened to it, I don't think so.
- [41:05]
Danny Gold
I don't know if it was like those mafia families involved with, with, with dealing hash on the streets, you know, in like Tel Aviv. But I mean, obviously someone was, was selling it, so some level of organized crime there. But there's, you know, the south sort of south Lebanese or Israeli Arab or Bedouin sort of middleman that, that connected the two.
- [41:24]
Sean Williams
Yeah, yeah. So to close this chapter of the episode before we head back to drug trafficking, I'm going to rattle all the way up to 2018. That year, the Barakat clan members attempt their biggest coup yet by bidding to take over a municipal airport in the town of Capitan Bado, remote place almost 300 miles north of Ciudad del Este, right on the Brazilian border. This will allow Hezbollah to move Bolivian produced cocaine into Paraguay and onto Brazil and Argentina. And incredibly or not, I guess, given the avalanche of corruption we've gone through today, they're helped in doing this by a ministry of the Paraguayan government which gives them the land for under $1,000. This, it seems, is a step too far for authorities. In May 2018, Paraguayan cops arrest and extradite to the U.S. a Hezbollah drug money launderer accused of washing almost a billion dollars. Also rounded up is a Colombian Lebanese national who had washed cocaine money for the Medellin cartel and Los Zetas and who was a follower of one of the men accused of plotting the 1994Amir bombing. In September that year, Assad Barakat himself is put in cuffs. By this point, he's one of the most wanted men in the United States. So Ciudad d', Aleste, global criminal champion. It's got to be right up there with Eastern Myanmar. Absolutely crazy level of organized crime. Since 2018, its role as a key transshipment point for cocaine has increased alongside the power of the PCC and other Brazilian gangs. I think we're going to do an episode about the rise of the Brazilian soon. It's one of the biggest stories in Latin America now. But now we are up to the story from today's cold open. It is late 2018. Diego Medina has been arrested with almost $200,000 in drug money. Stashed in that hidden compartment in his truck. His hand at El Cucho has a pal in Congress. They've paid the local cops and Medina has been allowed to continue his journey to drop off the money from Ciudad del Este to to Asuncion. But the reprieve won't last long. The calls between Cuccio and his political friends soon leak to the press and the Caso Perillo gets underway, drawing the lines between Cuccio's drug smuggling operations. Officials of the Colorado Party and naturally Horacio Cartes remember him, who between 2013 and 2018 is president of Paraguay. This gets dense, so I'll make it brief. Cucho had set up shop in Ciudad del Este and a province surrounding it with almost 250 miles of remote jungle border with Brazil. This also happens to be where Horacio Cartes makes the vast majority of his cigarettes and is also home to the Zacarias clan, a wealthy family who have been the connecting tissue between the region's licit and illicit. Is licit a word I don't know between the illicit and illicit industries going all the way back to Stroessner's rule. The family patriarch, Javier Zacarias, is the region's senator, while his wife, Sandra McLeod Latin America is weird, is the mayor of Ciudad del Este. Other Zacarias family members are sprinkled through the region in positions of power, all of them closely allied to Horacio Cartes. These are the guys sitting atop Paraguay's part of the triple frontier.
- [44:39]
Danny Gold
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- [46:02]
Sean Williams
The Klan's power has been linked to the lucrative smuggling business in the region, writes Inside Crime, whose 2022 feature on the Barrero case forms the biggest part of my research here. This has fueled suspicions that the Zacarias family's close ties to Cartes are partly due to the smuggling of cigarettes produced by his company, Tabesa. But that's not all. The Zacarias clan owns a huge stretch of land alongside the banks of that bridge with Brazil, which had originally belonged to the dictator himself, Strozna. That land was initially earmarked for homes for public sector workers, but it's now home to what else? A shopping mall plus a lucrative parking lot, apparently. For years, therefore, the Zacharias clan has built immeasurable wealth for their proximity dictators than the black market alongside the Brazilian border. But by 2018, they have a challenger, a muscle bound goatee political upstart named Ulysses Quintana. Quintana. He's a senator in the same border region as the Zacarias clan. He represents the Colorado Party, too, just like them. But seeing their wealth and power, Quintana decides he needs to hitch his horse to a different wagon. And in Cuccio, he thinks he's found it. See, Cucho is a striver. His hero is Pablo Escobar. He decorates his homes with pictures of Medellin. He rocks up to birthday parties in a Lamborghini Gajado Cachado. God, I'm so Argentine now. And just like his Colombian role model, he realizes his way to the top of Paraguay's cocaine tree won't be with Plomo bullets but with Plata cash. He forms alliances with two Ciudad del Este prosecutors, one of whom is the mother of Diego Medina, the driver whose arrest would soon bring his operation tumbling down. Among those who will later be indicted for connections to Cucho are three assistant prosecutors and 11 police officers. But Cucho's biggest partner is Ulysses Quintana. He pays for Quintana's censorship campaign and helps ferry campaigners around the huge, remote region. In return, Quintana offers Cucho protection. Wrestling Cite Crime quote Over time, this relationship evolved, and what began as a quid pro Quo became a business relationship. According to prosecutors, it was this business relationship that led Diego Medina to travel and from Ciudad del Este to Asuncion with 190 grand on August 28, 2018. And it was this same trip that brought about the downfall of both men. By 2018, the Colorado party is split between two factions, HC, the Kartismo faction and another led by Mario Abdo Benitez, a half Lebanese senator whose father was one of Alfredo Stroessner's closest allies. We got into a bunch in the previous episode. They're called the Golden Four. Quintana. He is in Abdo's crew. That year, Abdo takes the presidency from Cartes, which convinces Quintana that he's now untouchable. He passes his sentiment on to Cucho, telling him their relationship will allow him to become a kingpin on par with his idol, Escobar Cucho, though he isn't convinced. I was better off when I wasn't helping anyone, he tells Quintana. Nonetheless, Kucho manages to hook up with President Abdo, and there's even a photo of the two men embracing. Funnily enough, it's Cuccio who denies this photo when it comes out during the case, claiming, quote, I was never with him. Prosecutors will later show how Cucho has contributed half a million US dollars to Abdo's presidential campaign. I have more than 3 million photos, Abdo later says. Today. I can't say whether it's fake or real. What I can say is that I don't recognize that person. I've taken many photos with many people, I guess. Side note, probably he hasn't taken 500 grand off many people. However, when Matina is picked up with his 190 grand, though, Cucho is the head of a pretty big criminal empire stretching from Peru to Brazil, shipping hundreds of kilos of cocaine from the Andes into Ciudad del Este and onto Brazil and Argentina and Chile and Uruguay. He orders his men to pack Peruvian gear into bricks marked with his preferred Rolex brand and ship them via land in concealed truck compartments just like the one Medina had attempted to transport his drug money in. Medina's arrest. Of course, that takes place on August 28, 2018. On September 1, Medina heads back to Ciudad del Este and across the Friendship Bridge to Foster Iguazu, Brazil, where he hands over cocaine to an associate at a rural neighborhood. On September 2, Brazilian authorities arrest a buyer across town. This is the smoking gun Paraguayan cops need to arrest Cucho. On September 6, they launch Operation Barillo, conducting 22 raids and seizures, including on Cucho's home. Two weeks later, Quintana surrenders too. But the subsequent trial focuses on whether Barillo itself was masterminded by Cartes and and the Zacarias clan to trample on the power of current President Abdo Quintana and their rivals within the Colorado Party. Quintana has arrival of the Zacarias family and they answer to Horacio Cartes group, says Quintana's lawyer after his client's arrest. The Attorney General was appointed by Cartes. There's a clear connection between these things and why is this being done without evidence? It's more of a political vendetta than anything else. The lawyer, he then promptly ditches Quintana. In July the following year, audio recordings are leaked that show Cuccio and his lawyer attempting to bribe Colorado Party officials and get them to hire sympathetic judges. Quintana is released soon after that and despite being called back to prison, he keeps his seat in Paraguay's Congress throughout the entire thing. President Abdo, meanwhile, ditches Quintana. There will be no impunity whatsoever, he says. Whoever fails, no one is untouchable from the President of the Republic on down. That is the instruction I have given them. Cuccio responds to this by deciding that actually he has met Abdo, that photo was legit, and says to his lawyer that the Paraguayan president is a quote, Judas who is, quote, ungrateful. Medina, the driver he's screwed, of course, and he cops a decade sentence for his role in Cuccio's drug empire. Cucho and Quintana's geese would appear to be cooked too, right? Well, kind of wrong, because this is Paraguay tip brew. Quintana is allowed to leave pre trial detention in 2020 and soon after that announces he'll run for mayor of Ciudad del Este. Cucho too walks free from pre trial detention in September 2023. And both men have been living freely until this February. That month, both of them are hauled back in after new arrest warrants in connection with the Balolo case. And you think that's funny? Okay, here's some more comedy to round off our Paraguay 2 parter, Horacio Cartes, the Colorado's biggest of whigs. He's sanctioned by the US in 2022 for his, quote, involvement in significant corruption. But Cartes becomes Colorado president the following year, backing a handsome young chap named Santiago Pena to become the 52nd President of Paraguay. Yes, that Pena. The guy Trump can't stop making kissy faces at. And the same guy who's now arguably Trump's closest ally in his so called Shield of the Americas, a multilateral group aimed, on the surface at least, smashing cartels all over Latin America. Last month, Pena even agreed to allow US military and intelligence personnel to operate on Paraguayan soil under diplomatic immunity. How's that for full circle? Oh, and before I forget, the Galerie a Par, the shopping mall that's also the home of Hezbollah drugs and weapons smuggling still open. If any listeners are heading to the triple frontier soon, do us a favor. Buy yourself a black market Chinese TV there, celebrate the sale with a Horacio Cartes cigarette and some illegal whiskey, maybe even a knockoff cigar. Buy some of Cucho's cocaine. Grab yourself a degree at one of the many fake universities popping up across Paraguay. Indulge in some traffic, sex work, maybe top it all off by investing in some of the black market logging that has made the Paraguayan Chaco the most deforested place on earth. You see how much I had to leave out of this episode?
- [54:16]
Danny Gold
Listeners should probably skip some of Sean's suggestions, but some of the others sound nice. Except I'm sure those vacation darts are going to taste like you're smoking fiberglass particles. But what's that about fake universities popping up across Paraguay?
- [54:29]
Sean Williams
Yeah, this is a new thing where you can come into Paraguay and sort of enroll in a fake degree, get a fake diploma from some guy basically in a shed. And the latest thing is that a bunch of like crypto scammers are also rocking up. Did I mention this last week that when I went to Asuncion in the hotel, when I looked at the list of companies in the building I was staying at, I actually recognized like two or three of them as crypto scams that I've looked up online. So, yeah, it's. It's not getting better, it's getting worse.
- [54:59]
Danny Gold
I had no idea Paraguay was this wild. Like, still this wild.
- [55:03]
Sean Williams
Yeah, it's insane.
- [55:04]
Danny Gold
Man, what a country. Hope you're having. Hope you had fun. That you're going back anytime soon.
- [55:09]
Sean Williams
Yes, I think I am. To do a story about the 5,000 people who have disappeared since 2023 and no one knows who they are, where they've gone, or what's happened to them. Like they have just disappeared.
- [55:22]
Danny Gold
So, yeah, it is on hbo. That got decent second season and then
- [55:26]
Sean Williams
kind of never saw it. Was it good?
- [55:28]
Danny Gold
You know, I know people who absolutely loved it. I thought it got good then, you know, I think it's worth watching. I forget what it's called.
- [55:37]
Sean Williams
That's a great. That's a great tv.
- [55:40]
Danny Gold
Yeah, it was good. It was good. It's worth. It's worth. It's worth taking a look a show
- [55:45]
Sean Williams
that we don't know his name. It's all right.
- [55:47]
Danny Gold
Maybe the forgotten, the unforgettable. I don't know, dude. You know, my brain's got holes in it. Yeah.
- [55:53]
Sean Williams
My brain is mints. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Yeah, that's. That's the end.
- [55:56]
Danny Gold
I think that's enough from us.
- [55:57]
Sean Williams
That's the end of her.
- [55:59]
Danny Gold
We covered it all. Allegedly Done all this. I think so. Allegedly. All right, take care, guys. Thanks for listening.
- [56:26]
Sean Williams
Sam sa.
- [57:22]
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