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ROSARIO.– A new criminal phenomenon prevails in Argentina: prisons have been transformed into drug trafficking offices. From the federal prisons in different parts of the country, where the narco leaders from Rosario were distributed -who carry extensive sentences-, and in the Santa Fe prisons, the justice system detected that crimes are orderedare performed attacks and threatsy the business of selling drugs is still intact. How was arrive to this situation? The lack of controls and complicity in prison units, where smartphones enter and are used to manage the business in virtual networks, as if it were home office.
A Nahuel NovelinoLike other drug traffickers he doesn’t care about anything. She is going to spend a long time in jail and she is not interested if Justice discovers her impudence to act. He “Walks” through jails across the country. He was housed in Piñero and Coronda, in Santa Fe, Resistencia, Rawson and now in Marcos Paz. In all the prisons, without interruption, he continued to commit crimes, like in his native Venado Tuerto, where he trafficked drugs. The story of this 33-year-old man is perhaps an example of what happens to others like him: they commit more offenses and crimes while in prison than in freedom. Why jail does not mean that the criminal business ends, but quite the opposite, that another stage begins.
Last week, Novelino planted again threats against a federal judge, a federal prosecutor, a provincial senator and a mayor. He warned through another interlocutor that he is being held in the Rawson prison that he was going to attack them with “bullets and grenades.” “He who warns does not betray”, alerted the intimidating message that had as recipients an extensive list of judicial and political officials. Novelino added in recent years, as he explained to THE NATION the federal prosecutor Javier Arzubi Calvoone of those threatened, five cases for drug trafficking, and was already being investigated for threatening the provincial senator Lysander Henry and the mayor of Venado Tuerto Leonel Chiarella. The president of the Supreme Court of the Nation, Horace Rosattiasked the Minister of Security, Hannibal Fernandez, greater protection for judicial officials. The federal courts were shot at last September, and the order would have come from the Rawson federal prison, where this drug trafficker was imprisoned.
The violence that oozes from drug trafficking in Rosario once again generated a political crisis in Santa Fe. With the most powerful resource they have, which is terror, the drug traffickers exposed the weakness of the State that fails to find effective strategies to face a phenomenon that is relatively new in the country: the power of organized crime from prisons.
“All the time I ask for the preventive detention of people who are already in jail”, summarized the prosecutor Valeria Haurigotwho with that simple phrase exposed the complexity of a problem that began to hatch in the countries of the region a few years ago. The State always rested on the slogan that jail was the end of problemsbut this new reality marks the beginning of others, even more delicate, that have a direct impact on the streets.
A clue to the power that emanates from prisons was given a few years ago Jose Cerqueira Bremer, a magistrate from Curitiba -capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná-, who visited Rosario to help draw up a protection plan against judges and officials of the Judiciary. Bremer said that they began to notice that the appearance of WhatsApp began to change the internal organization of prisoners in Brazilian prisons. Technology had helped inmates begin to network. The power of instant communication had become a risk.
Bremer recounted that after several criminal and bloody acts that had been carried out from the prisons of San Pablo through WhatsApp, a magistrate dismissed the application through a court order. The effect was seen on the streets almost immediately.. The heads of the First Capital Command (PCC) ordered the burning of buses. in just two nights more than ten buses caught fire of public transport with Molotov cocktails. Justice had to reverse the measure. Bremer admitted that the state had underestimated the power that communication had radiated in organized crime.
The holder of Procunar, Diego Iglesiaspresented a report in September 2021 on how drug groups act in the shadow of federal prisons, where since the scandal broke out over the so-called Puf operation – with the diffusion of wiretaps on imprisoned politicians of Kirchnerism – the intelligence area of the Federal Penitentiary Service was dissolved. The document mentions 20 cases of drug lords, most of them already convicted, in which it was detected that they are still coordinating, from federal and provincial prisons throughout the country, “maneuvers of trafficking, transportation and commercialization of narcotics and other related crimes, either money laundering, homicides, kidnappings for extortion or threats”. The intelligence area of the Federal Penitentiary Service is still disjointed.
The leader of the Monkeys, Ariel CanteroHe did not need fiber optics or cell phones to continue giving orders. I did it since landlines provided by the agents of the Federal Penitentiary Service themselves –they were denounced– inside their cell in the Marcos Paz prison.
He had learned a trick used by his former ward partner Nestor “Loko” Rojas, leader of the First Border Command. The missionary, who he had tried to buy a missile inside the prison and tried to assassinate two magistrates from that province with Brazilian hitmen, he used as a method to communicate a triangulation that he did with his partner, who was not detained.
He called his wife with a cell phone and she contacted Rojas’ clients with another phone.. In this way, the Loko spoke with his partners without contacting them directly. In this way, he prevented the judicial authorities that followed his steps from hearing his voices.. Cantero began to do the same.
In the prisons of Santa Fe, the installation of a scanner system –similar to those in airports– to control what enters the prisons, such as drugs, telephones and weapons. The Secretary of Penitentiary Affairs of Santa Fe, Walter Galvezpointed out THE NATION that as a complement to this stricter control system the signal inhibitors will be ready at the end of May that will block the entire perimeter of the Piñero prison, where the second lines of the heaviest criminal gangs are housed. The overcrowding in that prison is 1,200 inmates. The collapse of prison units is another problem.
These changes generated the first reactions. Officials from the Santa Fe Penitentiary Service were threatened and acts of extreme violence took place which, as they suspect, were linked, such as he crime by Lorenzo Altamirano, a 29-year-old man, who was a street artist, who was shot in the vicinity of Newell’s stadium. His corpse was used to pass a mafia message. a few minutes later shot at Penal Unit No. 5called Order, which is for temporary prisoners, also a Police station in Villa Gobernador Gálvez, and a municipal building.
The urgency of the situation, which for some officials, such as the mayor of Rosario, Paul Javkinbroke all limits, led to several meetings being held in recent days to stop high levels of violence that endanger governability in Santa Fe. The president Alberto Fernandez met with the governor of Santa Fe, Omar Perotti, and then with the mayor. On Thursday, the executive board of the UCR at the national level decided to send a document letter to the President due to the insecurity situation in Rosario. “We must act immediately,” claimed the governor of Jujuy and head of the UCR, Gerardo Morales.
Governor Perotti led a meeting with the mayor and judges and prosecutors of Santa Fe, from both federal and provincial jurisdictions. They agreed to carry out a strong control in the prison environment, where most crimes and homicides are planned, based on the restriction of the use of cell phones.
Among the axes addressed were the intensification of prison work, both by the Penitentiary Service and by the investigative agencies of the different jurisdictions; the commitment of all the institutional actors in the claim for the strengthening of the federal Justice in the territory of Santa Fe, insisting on the urgent treatment of the bill presented by the national legislators of the province and of all the political parties.
“It was agreed to work hard in the prison environment and among the axes addressed is work at the prison level to guarantee that there are no cell phones inside, in addition to monitoring so that crimes are not planned from a cell,” he said. the government minister, Celia Arenaat the end of the meeting.