Sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, Paraguay’s strategic location allows its criminal actors – who have increasingly relied on rampant corruption – to ship drugs through South America and on to Europe. While the country does not have any homegrown hegemonic criminal organizations, guerrillas from the Paraguayan People’s Army (Ejercito del Pueblo Paraguayo – EPP) continue to test the state’s authority while securing income through extorting rural landowners and kidnapping. Cigarette and other contraband smuggling is rife.
Latest News
Prosecutors, Mayors and Prison Directors - Paraguay's Frightening Assassination Problem
Prosecutors, mayors, prison directors, relatives of officials - are assassinations here to stay in Paraguay?…
Prolific Money Launderer Dario Messer Sentenced in Brazil but Paraguay Left Hanging
Dario Messer, one of the most audacious money launderers in Latin American history, is facing jail time in Brazil but may never answer for his crimes in Paraguay.
Paraguay May Be Shifting from Producing LSD and MDMA to Consuming Them
Authorities in Paraguay have dismantled a ring that sold a range of synthetic drugs, indicating that this subset of the drug market in the South American country continues to expand.
Paraguay Profile
Paraguay has enjoyed relative stability following its transition to democracy in the early 1990s. However, the nation is the region's largest producer of marijuana and traffics more illegal cigarettes than any country in the Western Hemisphere. Organized crime in Paraguay benefits from rampant, widespread corruption, and criminal opportunities come from being wedged between South America’s two largest drug consumers in Brazil and Argentina, and being adjacent to one of the region’s burgeoning narcotics hubs in Bolivia.
PARAGUAY PROFILEInvestigations
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New details have emerged about the assassination of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, including that the hit was methodically planned in the Colombian city of Medellín, that its intellectual authors in…
Political assassinations, record drug seizures, gang wars – an avalanche of criminal concerns in Paraguay are coalescing around the city of Pedro Juan Caballero on the border with Brazil.
The assassination of a crusading Paraguayan prosecutor while on honeymoon in Colombia has caused widespread alarm about the rising levels of sophistication and brazenness of Paraguayan criminal groups.
Paraguay has launched the biggest operation against cocaine trafficking and money laundering in its history, unleashing a scandal that has forced the resignation of several politicians, amid growing international alarm…
An accused Brazilian trafficker who set himself up as an armored car dealer in Paraguay is the latest example of a Brazil underworld figure making a home in Paraguay, which…
Law enforcement in Latin America and Europe have disrupted a cocaine smuggling network that reached from Bolivia to Dubai, resulting in the arrests of a Paraguay-based dealer of armored vehicles…

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