“Stop talking to the fart, this is not going to be like this,” the hitman threw them in the middle of the audience Nazarene “Anteojito” Gauna. The prosecutors of the Shooting Unit Valeria Haurigot and Franco Carbone They looked at him in astonishment: a drug trafficker had just threatened them in front of the judge. It was not enough: “Putitos”, he told them. “You’ll see,” he added. It was December 2022 and it would be the last intimidation they would receive in the year.
Behind the advance of drug trafficking, which does not cease in rosary beadsThere are those who try to put a stop to it. They risk everything, even their lives, for their work. Prosecutors in Santa Fe are in constant danger.
“The narcos are out. They have such high sentences that sentencing them to 10 or 20 more years seems like a joke to them,” Haurigot confessed to NEWS. And he completes: “It is incredible. In the hearings we laugh.”
Since 2022 there have been a dozen threats against prosecutors and other judicial officials. It is not a minor detail: those who send these messages are responsible for hundreds of homicides.
In fact, last year it closed with a record number of murders in Rosario: 288. A total of 22 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, which is five times the national average. 2023 started worse: Between January, February and the first week of March, an average of one homicide per day was committed.
“We must highlight the courage with which they work,” says the attorney general of the province of Santa Fe, Jorge Baclini. “What happens generates a commotion. But with the security measures, they keep going, ”she completes.
The security measures are custody, a bulletproof vest in case of going to a dangerous raid and not much else. When they’re not working, prosecutors try to make life seem like normal. They naturalize. As if being threatened by hitmen was one more consequence of the job.
To make matters worse, resources are scarce. Regional Prosecutor’s Office 2 has 90 prosecutors (70 are in Rosario) and Baclini is asking for at least 20% more.
The federal jurisdiction is no better. Beyond the fact that the President has blamed the Supreme Court due to the drug advance at the beginning of ordinary sessions of Congress, 40% of the positions of the Federal Justice in Rosario are vacant. Of the 18 places created, only 10 are occupied by regular judges and prosecutors. The rest are paralyzed by the inaction of Alberto Fernández and the Senateeither.
On Wednesday the 8th, the Criminal Legislation and Justice commissions discussed the project to increase the number of judges and prosecutors in Santa Fe, an initiative that had been presented, without distinction of political parties, deputies and senators of that province. A long-term look at an urgent problem.
Lead. Haurigot and Carbone, the last threatened in 2022, had already felt the rigors of drug trafficking months before. In May, prior to a hearing with the leader of Los Monos, there was an anonymous telephone call from a woman to 911. “If ‘El Viejo’ Cantero is not released today, there will be lead for everyone. We have plenty of iron and bullets, ”she said. “That day we were scared, but we did the audience the same”, Haurigot now reveals.
The life of each threatened prosecutor is different. Some ask for permanent custody, others leave it only for the time recommended by the provincial police. Not another minute. “It is that one tries to preserve his normal life, with his children and with his activities,” says one of the intimidated.
In fact, some of them gave up that possibility: “If in each gang that I investigate there is a policeman involved, I prefer not to have custody. I don’t want them to know what car I have, where I live or where I go out to eat”, says a prosecutor completely off. “All criminal organizations have a police leg,” adds the mayor of Rosario, Pablo Javkin. There are plenty of examples: on March 2, they arrested an agent who was leaking information to an alleged Los Monos cell. His son had been arrested for being a hitman. Absurd.
The private lives of prosecutors take place far from social networks and generally in neighborhoods far from the center, although not strictly in the country. “Threats do not affect everyone equally: either you have the personality to work or you don’t,” says one of the judicial officials. Of course, they resort to different activities to get rid of the stress that generates so much violence. Most do therapy.
Who also felt the harshness of Los Monos was Matias Edery, prosecutor who imprisoned a large part of that gang. In January of last year, in full hearing, the widow of Claudio “Pájaro” Cantero crossed him: “This is not going to be like this,” she told him.
“At the moment, when you are working, you see it as part of your work. One falls when the hearing ends and relaxes ”, the prosecutor of the Complex Crimes Agency said then. And he added: “Coming from who comes, it was a situation to worry about.” Verdum’s threat to Edery was face-to-face. But since the pandemic, hearings with inmates have been held via Zoom. That, the prosecutors say, gives them greater impunity.
Despite the fact that Covid is now history, the virtual modality was installed in the Rosario trials. It is because no one guarantees the safety of the drug traffickers detained in the transfers. They fear an attack.
That generates delirious scenes. Like the one that occurred in May 2022, when they had to suspend a virtual hearing in which “El Viejo” Cantero and his band were accused of sound failures. No one from the Prison Service dared to touch the computer, so one of the inmates took over. “He is a DJ, that’s why he knows,” said another of the detainees with a laugh, in front of judges and prosecutors.
From their cells, the prisoners insult the officials. They are laughed at, provoked and intimidated. The kingdom upside down.
pamphlets. To the prosecutor of the Shooting Unit Paul Socca They threatened him with leaflets that they threw after causing damage to a municipal office. “Stop selling smoke with innocent people and putting prisoners, because Fran and Jonita Riquelme are targeting you,” they told him.
“What happened to me was unusual. Members of a gang that I had broken up threaten me with pamphlets, saying that I worked with the rival gang”, he tells Socca NEWS. And he adds: “The objective was: ‘don’t take it with us, but with them.’ After a week, the others replied: they intimidated me with a sign to give a message to the former”. They intimidated a judicial official to send messages between gangs. Incredible.
The mechanism of shooting a place to leave a sign that the media will later publicize became popular among criminal groups. It reached the extreme of the unusual after a shooting occurred this year, when the police searched the place and found no message. It seemed strange to them. Minutes later, a girl arrived with a piece of paper in her hand to give them the pamphlet that, evidently, they had overlooked. The narcos did not want them to leave the scene without knowing who the threat was directed at.
Although the most serious event occurred at the beginning of February, when criminals kidnapped a young man at random, shot him, put a piece of paper in his pocket and threw him in front of the Newell’s stadium to leave a mafia message for part of that club’s bar. . Lorenzo “Jimi” Altamirano was 28 years old, he was a musician and had no relationship with the drug dealer. They killed an innocent boy just to leave a note.
All threatened. Prosecutors are not the only ones working under the sword of Damocles. Journalists are also intimidated in Rosario. The last attack, a sign hanging outside Telefe Rosario that said “stop condemning the kids with your tongue that we are going to kill them.” The movileros had to go out into the streets with bulletproof vests for a while, on police recommendation.
On Sunday night, the 5th, they shot at School No. 6430 to leave a note addressed to The monkeys: “We are going to war”, they wrote. On Monday, the boys attended their second day of school in the year among the damage caused by the bullets.
But what really attracts attention in the Prosecutor’s Office is the new type of crime: extortion. Criminal groups shoot at a business or a factory and then ask for money. “They got a new source of income, with almost no risk. The danger would be that something like this would spread to the national level”, indicates Socca.
Every day, there are 23 new extortion complaints. The president of the Business Association of Rosario, Ricardo Diab, met with officials from the Ministry of Security and agreed on a protocol in the face of threats. “The unfortunate event that happened to the family roccuzzo revealed what we suffered a long time ago”, says Diab after the shooting suffered in the supermarket of the political family of Lionel Messi.
The problem is that, unlike what happened decades ago, prison does not leave criminals out of the game, who continue to operate from their cells with absolute comfort. It does not neutralize them. In 2014, for example, there were about 4,400 prisoners. Today the number has doubled: there are more than 10,500 in provincial penitentiaries. But crime continues to rise.
“We lack resources,” protests Attorney General Baclini. And he completes: “In 2015 there were 164 homicides and eight prosecutors to investigate them. In 2022 there were 288 and nine prosecutors. Impossible”.
Rosario also suffers from the lack of judicial employees. International standards speak of three assistants for each prosecutor, but in that city there are only one and a half. Being the place with the highest crime rate, those who do the judicial career try to avoid it.
Indirectly, many of them are in danger. One of these facts emerges from a judicial file where “Guille” Cantero, leader of Los Monos, is being investigated. His partner, Vanesa Barrios, tells him during the listening: “René shot the judicial ‘ring’. He almost killed the secretary who works in the courts. “And, that’s fine,” the drug dealer answers.
“It’s frustrating. We put 30 little soldiers in jail, but the next day there are 30 new ones. The business does not stop. The kids are fungible for the drug lords”, confesses a prosecutor. “Almost all the extortions and illicit associations that we investigate are commanded from prison. The person is already in jail. Played, ”he adds.
The last threat occurred in one-eyed deer, 150 kilometers from Rosario. In mid-February, a federal judge, a prosecutor, a provincial senator, and the mayor were intimidated by a drug trafficker. The message said that they were going to attack them with “bullets and grenades”. “He who warns does not betray,” he warned. For this fact, the president of the Supreme Court, Horacio Rosatti, asked Aníbal Fernández, the Minister of Security, for greater protection for judicial officials.
In the Shooting UnitFor example, three of the four prosecutors receive death threats. The office, which was created in 2020 due to the recurring shootings, arrested more than 200 drug traffickers, but they have more and more work. “It doesn’t make sense,” they lament.
They assure that they continue working with the same impetus because it is what they chose. By passion or habit. “But we know that if a drug trafficker decides to kill us, custody will not be effective. Luckily that limit was not crossed”, one of them is sincere. And he concludes: “They don’t kill us because they don’t want to, not because they can’t.”
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