Pilot admits to transporting the alleged drug trafficker Marset in a small plane belonging to a Paraguayan senator

Asunción.- The civil aviation pilot and National Police officer Fredy Garcete admitted this Thursday to having transported the alleged drug trafficker Sebastián Marset, supposedly without knowing who he was, in a small plane that belonged to the Paraguayan ruling party senator Erico Galeano, prosecuted for the alleged crimes of money laundering and criminal association after having lost his immunity in 2023.

Garcete referred to the issue in a hearing of the oral and public trial against Galeano since last August, which is part of the investigation into the ‘A ultranza PY’ operation, from February 2022, considered one of the largest in the country against organized crime and money laundering. For Galeano, being brought to trial does not prevent him from exercising his status as an officialist legislator in Congress. The lawyers of Galeano, who was in the hearing, presented the pilot as a defense witness, according to the live broadcast of the session led by magistrates Pablino Barreto, Inés Galarza and Juan Dávalos.

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When asked if he remembers having ever transported Marset on an aircraft, Garcete replied: “Marset, yes. I remember him, vaguely” and acknowledged that on some occasion he used a small plane with the registration ZP-BHQ, a vessel that, according to the investigations of the case, supposedly belonged to a company of Galeano. “It didn’t catch my attention at the time,” he stated about the flights allegedly made with Marset between 2018 and 2019 to the airport in the city of Minga Guazú, in the department of Alto Paraná (east). Marset has been a fugitive since July 29, 2023, when he managed to escape an operation by Bolivian authorities to capture him in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Garcete underlined, in addition, that he never dealt directly with Galeano, but rather made those flights at the request of another pilot, named Diego Quiroz, who paid him for his services. “Mr. Erico Galeano never contacted me directly, it was always through Diego Quiroz,” said Garcete, who explained that he works as a civil aviator in his free time from being a police officer. In July 2024, a judge in Paraguay ordered the prosecution in an “oral and public” trial of the senator of the ruling party for the alleged crimes of money laundering and criminal association after being linked to Marset and the alleged drug trafficker Miguel Insfrán, alias Tío Rico, imprisoned since 2023. The Congress approved the impeachment of Galeano in 2023 so that he could face the charges. Previously, the legislator stated to the media that “there is nothing conclusive” against him, and demanded that the presumption of innocence be respected in the trial, as well as asking for balance in the actions of the prosecutors.