ASUNCION/MONTEVIDEO, March 13 (Reuters) – Suspected Uruguayan drug kingpin Sebastian Marset, among the United States Drug Enforcement Agency’s most wanted fugitives, was arrested in Bolivia, Paraguay’s top anti-narcotics official said on Friday.
Marset, accused of leading the First Uruguayan Cartel, is wanted in Paraguay and Bolivia on organized crime charges related to cocaine trafficking between South American countries and Europe. He was indicted in the U.S. on money laundering charges, according to the U.S. State Department.
Paraguay’s anti-narcotics chief Jalil Rachid said Bolivian authorities carried out the operation, in an interview with Paraguayan local radio. A representative for the anti-drug trafficking unit of the Bolivian National Police would not confirm Marset’s arrest.
Bolivia, a major cocaine producer and key transit hub for traffickers, has said it is engaged in a broad, multinational strategy to combat organized crime, with its centrist government recently restoring operational cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after a 17‑year break.
Marset in 2021, was briefly detained in Dubai while traveling on a forged Paraguayan passport. Within days, Uruguayan authorities issued him a new passport that allowed him to leave the United Arab Emirates legally, prompting a scandal that later led to the resignations of several senior Uruguayan officials.
Marset was named in 2022 by Colombian President Gustavo Petro as being linked to the assassination of Marcelo Pecci, one of Paraguay’s leading anti-crime prosecutors who was shot dead on a Colombian beach while on honeymoon. Marset has not been charged in that case.
Marset’s brother, Diego Nicolas Marset, was arrested in Brazil in 2023 as one of South America’s most wanted fugitives by Interpol, in a police operation that involved agencies from Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
(Reporting by Daniela Desantis, Lucinda Elliott in Montevideo and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez in Barcelona; editing by Cassandra Garrison and Chizu Nomiyama)
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