Information about the location of the shelter where a drug lord from San Martín was taking refuge reached a group of Buenos Aires police three weeks ago. It was not in Corrientes, as initially assumed: the GPS pointed to General Rodríguez. But mounting a discreet operation to corner and capture him posed several challenges.
When they arrived at the scene, the detectives noticed that the streets had no names and that it was an area of small houses, with a lot of uncovered land. The geography of the area complicated the implementation of a covert surveillance system or “capacha”, as it is known in police jargon.
During the last three months, police investigators searched for the drug lord who would have been identified as Jesus Fabian Bravoaka the Fat Pey.
With the evidence provided by the detectives, a San Martín prosecutor ordered the capture of the drug boss for his alleged responsibility in a homicide that occurred in February 2024 in the settlement La Cárcova, in José León Suárezin the middle of a war between gangs to dominate the territory of drug sales.
The information that the police received three weeks ago did not indicate the address of the house. The only information that the detectives had indicated that Gordo Pey had taken refuge in a park neighborhood located to the right of Route 7, in the direction of Luján, where the urban area of General Rodríguez ends. Another reference that the researchers had about the neighborhood was that it was between kilometers 54 and 55 of the Western Access, on the left hand side of the hand that leads to Luján.
With quick tours and from a distance so as not to draw attention to the presence of strangers, after two weeks of surveillance, the investigators managed to identify one of Gordo Pey’s relatives and also located the small house from which the vehicle in which the member of the drug boss’s entourage left.
With this indication, the detectives were able to establish a possibility that indicated that Bravo and his relatives were taking refuge in a house with certain characteristics.
But in the last few days The installation of a circus in a nearby field opened a door so that the police could approach the small house that functioned as the drug lord’s storage room without attracting the attention of the soldiers guarding him.
According to investigation sources, a group of police officers was in charge of obtaining flyers from the circus, while Two officers dressed as clowns and distributed the pamphlets around the area.
None of the occupants of the small house where Gordo Pey was taking refuge were interested in the presence of the clowns with the pamphlets, because the circus installed in a nearby field could be seen from their shelter.
yesterday morning The two officers who had been following Gordo Pey’s trail for 15 days dressed as clowns, took the circus pamphlets and approached the small house where the drug lord was taking refuge.. But this time they were not alone: at least 20 troops blocked possible escape routes and Another brigade was part of the tactical group that stormed the hold and captured the drug lord, his wife and his nephew.
All were placed at the disposal of Functional Instruction Unit No. 7, headed by prosecutor Alejandra Maico.
The siege on Pey
According to police sources, the investigation began to gain a dizzying pace on April 1, when a brigade intercepted a gray Chevrolet Cruze at the intersection of Beruti and Primero de Agosto, in José León Suárez, and detained Iván Abel Bravo – nephew of Gordo Pey – and Emiliano Horacio Recalde. They kidnapped a Glock 9 millimeter with the number removed, a cell phone and drugs.
Certain that these arrests would put Pey on alert, “a Special Investigation Commission made up of specialized personnel from the Operations Directorate of the Superintendency of Investigations of Complex Crimes and Organized Crime of the Buenos Aires police under the charge of Commissioner General Matías Luján López, who developed criminal intelligence tasks, covert monitoring and analysis of movements on different members of the family and criminal environment” of the leader of the organization.
The first thing that emerged is that Pey and his closest entourage were not in Bella Vista, Corrientes, where it was presumed that they could have sought refuge. It was later established that they moved between Moreno and General Rodríguez, where they jumped from house to house, temporarily renting villas. This is how they detected that Fabián Jesús Bravo and Joana Abigail Giménez had settled in the Martín Fierro neighborhood along with their children.
The installation of Circus Lucas in the neighborhood provided the police with a disruptive idea. Two Buenos Aires police officers dressed as clowns from the circus that operated in the field next to the aguantadero and They risked their lives to capture the drug lord who dominated drug trafficking in La Cárcova for almost two decades.
Both walked through the dirt streets, with their colorful costumes and thick wigs to distribute promotional pamphlets for the circus; From house to house they left papers and, in passing, scrutinized movements inside the small houses.
Thus they first surprised Joana Gimenezaccused of being the alleged author of a series of coercive threats aggravated by the use of firearms against a group of drug sellers from a rival gang.
A special group from the brigade broke into the house and caught Gordo Pey, who resisted, but was quickly neutralized. He was arrested, among other crimes, for his alleged responsibility in the homicide of a drug “deal” that occurred on February 18, 2024 in the José León Suárez settlement.
At the beginning of this year, that area in the northwest of the suburbs was the scene of four homicides in the context of a war between drug gangs that fight over each drug sales bunker.
Two of those murders occurred less than 24 hours apart. The first victim was a young man who had no ties to the transas in the area. It was a homicide by mistake: The real target of the attack was a drug seller from a drug gang known as Mate Cocido.who commands his criminal organization even though he is imprisoned in a federal prison.
24 hours passed and revenge was achieved. The victim was identified as Angel Aguirrea hitman who responded to Mate Cocido’s gang. He was murdered with a double mechanism: they shot him in the back of the head and made a deep cut in his abdomen.
To carry out the investigation that would allow Gordo Pey to be arrested, Justice had to convene a special group of the Buenos Aires police. This was done taking into account that each commissioner who took over as head of the section with jurisdiction in La Cárcova did not last more than four months in office due to the high level of corruption.
At the beginning of the investigation, while the final stage of the search for Gordo Pey was taking place, two police officers who worked at that police station were sentenced to four years in prison for receiving bribes from the drug boss in exchange for protection.
It was no coincidence that Gordo Pey and his partner took refuge in General Rodríguez. From that place you can access Route 6 or the Camino del Buen Ayre: This last highway was the route chosen by the drug boss to take the drugs to his collection houses in La Cárcova. While General Rodríguez’s villa served as a logistical base. Bravo had already been arrested in October 2016, during a series of operations carried out by the Buenos Aires police in the aforementioned settlement.
Four years later he regained his freedom and tried to recover the territory occupied by the gangs of Mate Cocido and another drug trafficker in the area known as “Abel.” But he was shot in the hip and had to retreat to Lanzone, another settlement located in a market next to the Camino del Buen Ayre, between Route 8 and Debenedetti Avenue.
According to police sources, With the capture of Gordo Pey and Joana, his partner, the main bunkers of La Cárcova would have been dismantled. Although the drug boss did not appoint a successor and with several of his lieutenants imprisoned and murdered, Gordo Pey’s place could be occupied by another gang.
As far as he could know THE NATION According to investigation sources, “the criminal structure led by Pey evidenced an organic and hierarchical functioning, with clearly defined roles among its members, who coordinated the different illicit maneuvers through communications sent through digital platforms with complex trackingin order to avoid being detected using traditional investigative tools.”
There were members who fulfilled functions related to the administration of points of sale, distribution of narcotics and storage of illicit substances in buildings used as collection places, which denoted that it is “an organization with marked territorial control, sustained through the systematic use of violence, intimidation, qualified threats with firearms and even acts of homicide, instilling fear in neighbors and third parties in order to subdue them and ensure control of the marketing areas,” according to reported.
