A Paraguayan lawmaker from the ruling Colorado Party died on Monday during a shootout with anti-drug police during a raid on one of his homes in the northeast of the country, according to official sources.
“The interveners were repelled with gunfire and returned fire, mortally wounding the parliamentarian” Eulalio Gomes, said the police chief, Carlos Benítez, to the press.
Gomes, 67, was a member of parliament for the ruling conservative Colorado Party.
Benitez said that two raids were carried out on the deputy’s properties in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, 550 km northeast of Asuncion, on the dry border with Brazil, and said that shots were fired in both, which were responded to by the police.
The search warrant was signed by a judge for the arrest of “people suspected of being part of a money laundering scheme from drug trafficking and criminal association.”
Among those to be arrested was Alexandre Gomes, the politician’s son, who escaped but later turned himself in to authorities, according to the police report.
The police chief clarified that they did not plan to arrest Eulalio Gomes, who enjoys parliamentary immunity, but they did plan to seize documents related to the investigation.
Hours earlier, prosecutors had charged the parliamentarian, his son and three other people in a case of “money laundering from international trafficking of dangerous drugs.”
Congress did not comment on the issue and its president, Basilio Núñez, a member of the ruling party, declined to give an opinion “before having the version of the participants.”
The Chamber of Deputies declared three days of mourning to pay tribute to the rancher and politician whose body was taken to the capital to be laid to rest at the parliamentary headquarters.
Individually, other parliamentarians close to Gomes condemned the killing and called for the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Enrique Riera, and the Chief of Police (Benítez).
“I spoke with the president (Santiago Peña, on a tour of Costa Rica) and he confirmed his 100% confidence in me, in the police chief and in the fight against organized crime. I cannot prevent them from asking for my head,” Riera responded.
The MP “was facing charges of money laundering and drug trafficking. In this regard, the Government has a very strong position in the fight against organised crime,” said the minister, who specified that the politician was transferred alive to a hospital.
The deceased’s lawyer, Oscar Tuma, said Gomes was “killed in his bed” while unarmed and called for the investigation to be “extremely transparent.”
Considered one of the country’s wealthiest politicians, Gomes owned 14 ranches and 15,000 heads of cattle on nearly 10,000 hectares of land and claimed to have about $130 million, according to the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR).
- «Worrying links» –
Last July, Brazilian media published investigations that pointed to Gomes as an alleged accomplice of drug traffickers from that country such as Luiz Carlos Da Rocha, alias “Cabeza Branca”, sentenced to 50 years in prison in his country, and pointed to him as responsible for the escape of the wanted drug trafficker Ronaldo Mendes Nunes, leader of the criminal group Comando Vermelho.
“In Paraguay we are like in the time of Escobar Gaviria,” said opposition senator Celeste Amarilla.
“The discussion should be about what drug traffickers turned parliamentarians are doing here,” he stressed and questioned: “How is it that the son escapes and takes refuge in the police station,” referring to Alexandre, who was finally arrested.
The senator, a member of the Liberal Party, warned that the Paraguayan electoral system “invites criminals and drug traffickers to run and win elections.”
In 2015, another pro-government deputy, Magdaleno Silva, was also killed, but at the hands of hitmen in front of his home, in a town 50 km from where Gomes lived.
“The links between drug trafficking and politics are becoming increasingly worrying,” said criminologist Juan Martens.
“There is information about people who are mayors, city councilors in the interior and political leaders who are under suspicion,” he stressed, after pointing especially to the northeastern region of the dry border with Brazil.
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