This Tuesday, a series of raids were carried out in Argentina and other countries within the framework of the third international operation “Allies for Children”, which aims to disrupt networks of transmission and production of child sexual abuse material that operate through global level. As a result, 15 suspects were arrested.
In total, there were 33 procedures that were promoted by the authorities of the United States Embassy in Argentina, the US Department of Homeland Security of the United States and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the City of Buenos Aires. Both institutions cooperate mutually to combat the sexual exploitation of minors through the use of the American investigation system “Internet Crimes Against Children Child On-line Protection System (ICACCOPS)” and “Child Protection System (CPS)”.
They were carried out simultaneously in 12 provinces of the country (Buenos Aires, Chubut, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Formosa, Jujuy, Río Negro, Salta, Santa Fe, Tierra del Fuego and Tucumán, in addition to CABA) and also in the Dominican Republic , Ecuador, Paraguay, Panama, Puerto Rico, Germany, Costa Rica and Peru.
So far there are 15 people detained, 9 of them in Argentina -4 in CABA, 3 in Santa Fe, 1 in the province of Buenos Aires and 1 in Salta-. Four other suspects were also arrested in Ecuador, one in Puerto Rico and the remaining one in Costa Rica.
In the searches, 176 items related to sexual abuse of minors were seized. Sources in the case told Infobae that one of the detainees wanted to get rid of a disk when the police entered his home and threw it with the intention of destroying it, but finally the object was recovered and will be examined.
The operations revealed other peculiarities. In another place inspected, a significant amount of drugs was found. While in the seven raids in Buenos Aires territory (which took place at homes in the districts of Avellaneda, Lanús, La Plata, Lomas de Zamora, Morón and Quilmes), the agents assisted two cohabiting minors and arrested an accused who had material of child sexual abuse produced by him.
The investigation is being carried out by the PCyF Prosecutor’s Office No. 17 specialized in Computer Crimes and Contraventions, led by prosecutor Tomás Vaccarezza. The addresses of the suspects emerged from data collected by the Cybercrime Unit of the Judicial Investigation Corps (CIJ) of the Buenos Aires MPF. The raids – in which the federal forces, the City Police and the provincial police participated – were ordered by the PCyF Court 17 led by Natalia Ohman.
“In total, more than 100 users of P2P networks distributed in Argentina and the rest of the countries were investigated,” said the City’s Attorney General, Juan Bautista Mahiques.
Operation “Allies for Children III” is the third international action conceived and coordinated from Argentina, to combat the Sexual Exploitation of Boys, Girls and Adolescents. The first had taken place in August 2023, when 46 people were arrested. The other was in December, in which there were 13 detainees and 9 countries participated: Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ecuador, United States, Chile, Paraguay, Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico.
Four other suspects
In the last few hours, other raids were carried out that disrupted an international network trafficking in child sexual material. They were in the provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa and Tucumán, and in other cities in Hungary, Australia, Canada, the USA, Brazil and the Philippines.
In this case, the investigation is in the hands of prosecutor Daniel Ichazo, head of the Functional Instruction and Trial Unit No. 8 of Berazategui, and arose after an alert from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a US organization that is responsible for detecting these facts.
International network of pedophilia and child pornography trafficking disrupted
The Complex Technological Crimes and Special Investigations Department of the City Police carried out field measurements, cyber patrolling over open networks (OSINT) and technological tasks on the social network Telegram and the WhatsApp application to find four defendants and their IP connections.
They thus arrived at homes in Berazategui, in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán and in the Pampas city of Intendente Alvear. There, elements of interest to the case were seized. Among them, 58 video cassettes, 20 CDs, 8 VHS tapes, 14 cell phones, four tablets, two cameras, a notebook, a CPU, pen drives and memory cards, among others.
The Risk Analysis and Protection Division of the City Police and the Departmental Police and Security of Berazategui also participated in the procedure.
(Infobae)
