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Paraguayan authorities were unaware that the fugitive alleged cocaine kingpin Sebastián Enrique Marset Cabrera was a majority shareholder in an entertainment company in Colombia, which a judge says could have been used to launder illicit funds.
Reporters have discovered that Marset owns 85 percent of a Colombian company called JC Productions/Mastian Productions SAS.
That firm shares almost the same name as a Paraguayan company, also called Mastian Productions, which prosecutors allege was used by Marset “to justify the origin of illicit assets.” But authorities were unaware of the Colombian firm until informed by reporters.
“Judicially, we have no information regarding this,” said Rosarito Montanía, the judge presiding over the case against Marset in Paraguay.
“It would not be surprising to me if they also wanted to bring (the Colombian firm) into this criminal group's money laundering scheme,” she told OCCRP.
The Colombian Prosecutor's Office declined to answer questions, saying it could not provide information about individuals.
Authorities in the U.S. accuse Marset of running an international cocaine trafficking ring, and the State Department in May announced a reward of $2 million for information leading to his arrest.
Marset had been convicted of drug trafficking offenses in his home country of Uruguay in 2013. But in 2019, the year both the Paraguayan and Colombian entertainment companies were founded, he was evading law enforcement by using two fake identities.
Part of his cover was to portray himself as a show business entrepreneur, organizing concerts in several Latin American countries, according to Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office.
By the end of 2019, Marset’s name began to appear online in promotional-style articles that described him as a “renowned producer” or “a musical showbiz prodigy.”
The Paraguayan Public Prosecutor’s Office said in its investigation into Marset that articles “where he is presented as a successful businessman in the arts and entertainment sector” were “used as a facade to justify his real illicit commitment in countries of the region.”
The Paraguayan company, Mastian Productions, was part owned by José Alberto Insfrán Galeano, who prosecutors allege acted as a “facilitatator” for Marset.
Insfrán is the brother of Miguel Ángel Insfrán — also known as ‘Tío (Uncle) Rico’ — who Paraguayan prosecutors allege was Marset's main partner.
They accuse Marset and Tio Rico of sending 17,340 kilograms of cocaine to Europe and Africa between 2020 and 2021.
The formal accusation and request for oral trial made by prosecutor Deny Yoon Pak against Insfrán alleged that Mastian Productions in Paraguay allowed Marset to “enjoy his illicit profits from international cocaine trafficking... so that he could justify the supposed source of his wealth and thereby conceal its illicit origin.”
Insfrán’s lawyer, Nelson López, said Mastian Productions in Paraguay had “no relationship whatsoever” with the Colombian company. He said the Paraguayan firm had been set up to organize religious concerts but “was never operational.”
Corporate documents show that Marset purchased 85 percent of the shares of the Colombian firm, JC Productions/Mastian Productions SAS, using a Bolivian passport under the name Gabriel de Souza Beumer. Marset is in the passport photo.
The deal was done on October 16, 2019, according to the documents. The investigation by Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office found that Marset had travelled to Colombia on October 14 of that year on his fake passport.
The company had been incorporated less than two months earlier by Jairo Alberto Criado Tarazona, a former Colombian soldier.
Criado told reporters over the phone that he did not know that Gabriel de Souza Beumer was really Marset, adding: “He never told me to launder money.”
