After 38 raids in different villages of the Buenos Aires party of San Martín, at least 13 people were arrested accused of being part of a gang led from prison by drug lord Miguel Angel “Mameluco” Villalba and his son Iván. Investigators suspect that this organization is linked to the drug cut with carfentanillo that caused three weeks ago 24 deaths and more than 80 intoxicated in the northwest of the conurbation. The operation carried out by personnel of the Federal Police and the bonaerene was baptized as “Wild Drug” and for the federal prosecutor 2 of Tres de Febrero, Paul Starc, in charge of the investigation, “there are indications to think that the cocaine that killed the twenty-four boys is related to the people of ‘Mameluco'”. The proceedings were ordered, at starc’s request, by Federal Judge 2 of San Martín, Alicia Vence, based on wiretaps made to the leaders of the Villalba clan, who continued to give orders from their respective cells, in the case of “Mameluco” from the Rawson prison and his son Iván from the Magdalena prison.
“We confirmed that the drug was in the place we thought it was, that it is related to the cause of the poisoned drug and that the organization is the same,” Buenos Aires Security Minister Sergio Berni said at a press conference held in Villa 18 of the San Martín party. the Federal Court stressed that “the presence of gangs with sophisticated resources and means, the intervention of long-standing ‘clans’ of the jurisdiction, deployments in sectors of great vulnerability of the General Party of San Martín, collusion of security forces personnel and the action of people despite being deprived of liberty were verified.” “It’s an investigation from about two years ago with wiretaps, footage. It came to the moment in which this whole gang of Villalba and his son was formed, “said the prosecutor. In the procedures carried out in San Martín, Morón, La Plata, Rawson and Lomas de Zamora, 5,546 wrappers of cocaine, 2.57 kilos of marijuana were kidnapped between wrappers, plants and pieces, four scales and 27 cell phones. They seized two heat sealing machines, material for the packaging of the doses, a FAL rifle with two magazines, a machine gun, five 9-millimeter caliber pistols, one .45 and another .380, 280,050 pesos and a Peugeot 307 and a Ford Escort.Two of the raids were made in the prisons of the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF), where the two leaders of the clan are serving previous sentences, that is, the cell of “Mameluco” Villalba in Unit 6 of Rawson and that of his son Iván “El Salvaje” in Unit 28 of Magdalena.
“Father and son were still managing everything from prison. It’s in the eavesdropping. And we believe that they may be involved with adulterated cocaine,” a judicial source told Telam, who assured that although the arrest of 13 people, including the Villalba, was confirmed, there were also a fortnight of delays who were not involved in this case. It cannot be that a convicted person continues to handle a phone from prison, the man continues to sell drugs as if nothing happened,” concluded prosecutor Starc. Mameluco” Villalba had been sentenced to 27 years in prison for money laundering and drug trafficking, and will be tried as the alleged instigator of the crime of Candela Sol Rodríguez, committed in an alleged adjustment between gangs. The man was accused of putting drug money into circulation with the purchase of goods such as eight taxis, an apartment and a high-end van, among others. The Federal Oral Court (TOF) 2 of San Martín found him guilty in 2018 of “money laundering of illicit origin” and sentenced him to six years in prison; but as he already had a conviction of 23 for drug trafficking, he was set a single sentence of 27.Villalba had been convicted in 2014 by the TOF 3 of the same Judicial Department, which considered him an organizer and financier of a gang that until 2011 trafficked cocaine and marijuana in the Villa 18 de Septiembre in Billinghurst. The court accredited that “Mameluco” even commanded this organization from prison, while purging another conviction for drug trafficking.
