Drug trafficking in Rosario and its region often appears in the media due to the display of violence carried out by gangs that are dedicated to retail sales and that dispute territories in the neighborhoods. But it has another side, less visible, where violence does not illuminate: the trafficking of enormous shipments that leave through ports or that are inserted into ships that departed from the port areas of the region.
The way drugs leave Rosario or its surroundings through the Paraná River occurs through different modalities. Based on court records, Rosario3 reconstructed three verified alternatives.
“Blind hook” inside
One of these mechanisms, perhaps the most emblematic, consists of the judicial case that targeted the Puerto Rosario Terminal (TPR). In 2022, it was found that at least two shipments of cocaine had left and were seized in Santos (Brazil) and Rotterdam (Netherlands).
The file revealed something that had always been a comment, even by political leaders: that large volumes of cocaine left the city’s port.
The case exposed at least a way to “contaminate” a shipment: the “blind hook.” This technique implemented consisted of breaking the customs seals of the container that was in the TPR tax warehouse to throw bags of drugs on top of tons of peanuts that came from Córdoba.
After this maneuver, seals very similar to those violated were placed, which necessarily involved connivance of port personnel and, possibly, other authorities that at least in the investigation do not appear.
“Blind hook” outside
Another cause that shows how large organizations dedicated to international drug trafficking operate, and that use Rosario and towns in the region as one of the logistical points, is the August 2022 seizure of more than 1,500 kilos of cocaine. The discovery was in a warehouse located in Génova at 2400, in Empalme Graneros, one of the areas with the highest rates of violence, mainly due to gangs that fight with gunfire over retail sales.
Unlike the cocaine that left Puerto Rosario in bags thrown on top of tons of peanuts, the operation in this case was different: the bricks with the drug had been introduced into the corn pellets whose final destination was Spain, as established in the federal trial in which they were all convicted.
The drug was supposed to have been brought on planes from Colombia or Peru, and thanks to the logistical contribution of Gabriel Nicolau and José “Tano” Sofía, lPackages bearing the Louis Vuitton logo were moved along the routes to three warehouses in Rosariowhere the “conditioning” of the load was done.
That step consisted – as judicial investigators explained – of putting the drug in the middle of the corn pellets, where it was sprayed with a substance to avoid being detected in the scanners at the Puerto Rosario Terminal.
“Sea box”
Beyond the security measures that have been promoted by the port of Rosario or those of the industrial cordon after the spread of these cases, cocaine continues to leave through the Paraná River. A proof of that is the loss of several bags of cocaine in the water in November 2023, when a boat with two occupants abandoned the boat and the bricks with narcotics in Puerto Norte and ran to one of the old neighborhoods of the city, such as the Refinery.
In that investigation, in which There are at least five people involved judicially –the main one is Nicolás J., prosecuted with effective preventive detention, who is believed to have been in command of the boat and abandoned it with the cocaine– was detected by the Delegation of Criminal Intelligence and Investigations of the Prefecture of the Bajo Paraná Zone that the maneuver there was going to be different from the two mentioned above.
A boat was going to approach a ship parked – or, as they say, in a roadstead – and through a rope thrown to the ship he was going to put his bagss, which were later going to be hidden inside with clear connivance on the part of the crew.
But the “more advanced” organizations have an even more complex variant to put the drugs on a ship. They operate with tactical divers, generally Brazilian, who place the bags in a compartment called a “chest or sea box.”
This maneuver carried out with divers is not unknown, since There were several cases of contamination from ships that were in the region (it is suspected that in the river at the Rosario-San Lorenzo level, between the jurisdictions) and they arrived with the narcotic material at the port of destination.
One of the most remembered events occurred in May 2022, when On the coast of Newcastle (Australia), the body of a Brazilian diver was found next to 50 kilos of cocaine that floated next to him. The drug, it is believed, had traveled on the grain ship Arieti that had been in San Lorenzo and was due to arrive in Oceania.
The deceased diver, for investigators, was a paid person or member of the same organization that had contaminated the boat. It is presumed that He went on a plane with other members of the band to Oceania and died while trying to get the cocaine off the boat.in the so-called “sea chest or box”.
Doesn’t anyone detect those divers while they are contaminating a ship? The researchers indicated Rosario3 that both in the case of the deceased in Australia and in other cases of international drug trafficking, it was found that They use an oxygen system that does not emit bubbles in the water – closed circuit diving equipment -, so they are imperceptible to the eye.
An illustrative image of a Drager closed circuit tactical diving rig (@DSSafetyARG).
Boat pollution is not only done in Rosario, San Lorenzo, Puerto San Martín or Timbúes. Organizations use water and another no less important element: They handle information, sometimes confidential, and they know when they can have easier maneuvering. It does not occur only in the region: there were numerous similar cases in Arroyo Seco, Villa Constitución or San Nicolás.
