In October, officials there said they had foiled a plot to deploy a car bomb packed with pounds of explosives to free a jailed drug lord. Then came two chilling murders: A lawyer who represented drug king pins was assassinated as she stepped out of a meeting, and a young woman was stabbed to death with a dinner knife while visiting a drug trafficker in prison.
These crimes have one thing in common: The chaos is spilling over from Brazil. Much of the mayhem in the region has been fueled by American guns. So many American weapons were being shipped into Paraguay that officials in the United States took the rare step of halting commercial arms exports to the country this year. American officials took action after noticing that arms suppliers in the United States had sent nearly 35 million weapons and rounds of ammunition to Paraguay in β more than three times the amount sent the year before, according to United States government data obtained by The New York Times.
Paraguay shares a thinly policed, mile border with Brazil, and has long been a hub for smuggling and money laundering. The country is a major producer of marijuana, has a vibrant arms market and acts as a conduit for cocaine shipped from neighboring Bolivia. Guizzio said. But the judicial branch has become one of our most corruptible. Villamayor said. Signs that Paraguay faces a worsening organized crime problem have been mounting for years.
In April , criminals set cars on fire across Ciudad del Este, a city close to the border with Brazil and Argentina, to divert police attention while they stormed a Spanish cash transporting company and used a bomb to blast into the safe room. After stealing millions of dollars, some of the assailants fled on boats across the river into Brazil. Veiga, known by the alias Marcelo Piloto, had been a fugitive from Brazilian law since , when he fled from prison 10 years into a year sentence.
He became a top target for Brazilian and American law enforcement officials after escaping to Paraguay in and escalating the smuggling of weapons and drugs into districts of Brazilian cities controlled by the Comando Vermelho gang. In the final weeks of , after months poring through intercepted communication and gathering intelligence from human sources, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration at the American consulate in Rio de Janeiro discovered that Mr.
