The Japan Times - Top Latin American narco trafficker Marset arrested in Bolivia: govt source

"Sebastian Marset was arrested this Friday at dawn in a Bolivian police operation," the source, who asked not to be identified, told AFP.

He was arrested in the eastern city of Santa Cruz in an operation that mobilized hundreds of police officers, an AFP journalist at the scene witnessed.

He was taken to the city's international airport, where he boarded a plane with a US registration, according to sources in the interior ministry.

Four other people were also arrested.

The most notorious drug baron in the southern part of South America, Marset has a $2 million US bounty on his head for alleged money laundering.

He was also sought by Paraguay and Bolivia.

The soccer-mad Marset laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring lower-level professional soccer teams across Latin America and Europe and even put himself in the starting lineups.

- Imitating soccer heroes -

A Washington Post profile from 2024 said he paid $10,000 in cash to wear the number 10 jersey worn by football icons Pele, Maradona and Messi and that referees, fearful of retribution, refused to blow their whistles when he fouled other players.

He stamped his drug shipments "The King of the South," the Post added, and gave orders for cocaine to be stashed in shipments of cookies and soybeans.

Paraguay's Interior Minister Enrique Riera told reporters his country would seek his extradition, while adding he believed Marset would most likely end up in US custody.

"The most important thing is that he has been detained," he added.

Marset had been on the run since July 2023, when fled his home in Santa Cruz, on the eve of a massive police operation to capture him.

A Paraguayan investigation linked him to seizures of more than 16 tons of cocaine, including a major haul in the port of Antwerp in 2021.

The investigation reportedly revealed Marset asking advice in text messages on how to disappear the bodies of murdered enemies.

His capture comes less than a month after a major Mexican drug kingpin, Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera, was killed by the military during a capture raid in that country.

M.Yamazaki--JT