Sebastián Marset, one of the five most wanted drug traffickers by the DEA in the world, is captured in Bolivia

The operation was carried out during the early hours of this Friday in the region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Security forces report the arrest of three other people and the seizure of numerous weapons.

Official sources in Bolivia and Paraguay confirmed to local media that the operation was deployed at 2 a.m. in the neighborhood of The Palms. Units of the Special Forces to Fight Drug Trafficking. Armored vehicles and a strong contingent of troops participated.

Jalil Rachidminister of the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD) of Paraguay, explained that the units managed to “corner Marset and his structure.” According to sources informed of the operation, three other people from his organization were arrested along with Marset.

Last week, the Paraguayan Minister of the Interior, Enrique Riera Escuderoreiterated that the alleged drug trafficker was in Bolivia, a version he had maintained since last October. The Ministry of Government of Bolivia responded that “there is no official confirmation about the presence of Sebastian Marset in Bolivian territory”.

Marset, 34 years old, was born in Montevideo. He was not a conventional drug dealer. He proclaimed himself as the “King of the South” and managed to build a criminal network that intelligence agencies compare to a multinational crime corporation. He was also known as the “millennial drug dealer” and “the man of a thousand faces.”

His organization, baptized by himself as the First Uruguayan Cartel (PCU), established strategic alliances with other powerful organizations, such as the Insfrán clan of Paraguay, the First Capital Command (PCC) of Brazil and the feared ‘Ndrangheta of Italy.

In 2022 he was accused of killing the Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci in Colombia. Since then, he was considered a “high value” criminal and appeared on the list of the most wanted drug traffickers by the Police of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and, of course, the US DEA.

He became very popular for his appearance on social networks declaring his innocence: “I don’t know where they get that I have… that I am a murderer“, he declared in one of them. Established in Bolivia, he managed to escape with his wife and children from a police operation in July 2023, after being alerted of the intervention.

Marset had been a fugitive from Bolivian Justice since mid-2023, when the lifestyle he led in Santa Cruz came to light. He is passionate about soccer and founded a team in the Bolivian second division, Los Leones del Torno, in which he played.