this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
36 points (95.0% liked)

News

23296 readers
3443 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago

moreGaleano was a Paraguayan senator and tobacco baron. He had close ties to the country’s most influential politician, former president Cartes, who was put on the U.S. sanctions list for “rampant corruption.” Cartes was effectively still running portions of the country.

Both men had used soccer for political and financial gain — and worked in Paraguay’s National Congress to keep sports teams exempt from money-laundering legislation. Cartes funneled tens of millions of dollars to one of the country’s biggest soccer clubs, Libertad, and Galeano threw millions at Deportivo Capiatá, according to government records. Roughly $1.3 million of Galeano’s investment in the team appears to have come from cocaine trafficking, Paraguay’s attorney general would later argue. Erico Galeano, a Paraguayan senator, left. Horacio Cartes, Paraguay’s former president, right. (Obtained by The Washington Post; Daniel Duarte/AFP/Getty Images; iStock)

Galeano and the club declined requests for comment. Cartes’s lawyer, Pedro Ovelar, said that the U.S. sanctions against Cartes represented “political persecution” and that his relationship with Galeano was a “political relationship, not a commercial one.”

By 2016, Galeano was elected president of Capiatá. At games, he sat just above the sideline in the center of the stadium. The team’s popularity translated to his own.

But it had begun to struggle. Capiatá was relegated to the country’s second division in 2019. Once-loyal fans stopped attending games. Players complained that the team’s equipment and gear were inadequate.

When he arrived in 2021, Marset began bankrolling improvements: new physical therapy beds, televisions, better food in the cafeteria. It was enough to win over his teammates. Though he wasn’t formally listed as the team’s owner, he poured drug money into Capiatá, investigators say, and siphoned a portion of its revenue.

The deal was even sweeter than that: Marset also bought himself a spot on the squad.

But the team’s coach, Nuñez, a former player on the Paraguayan World Cup team, was not impressed.

“I had the obligation to win or else they would fire me,” said Nuñez, who initially planned to keep Marset on the bench. “But it wasn’t the same for him. He was just having fun.”

There seemed to be only one person, investigators said, who could have brought Marset to Capiatá: Galeano. Paraguayan prosecutors found that Marset had been using the private jet of Galeano’s company to ferry his associates. Prosecutors also identified property deals between Galeano and Marset’s cartel. They would later indict the senator.

“Erico Galeano Segovia was at the service of the transnational criminal organization, dedicated to the international trafficking of cocaine,” the attorney general’s office wrote this year. The case has yet to go to trial.

Marset initially seemed unconcerned that his soccer career at Capiatá might raise his profile with authorities. He allowed the team to publish his name on its roster before games each week.

But by the end of May 2021, Marset learned that narcotics officers were trying to find him. It appears he was tipped off by high-level contacts in the Paraguayan government, investigators said.

He stopped going to practice at Capiatá. His name was abruptly taken off the team’s roster.

When players passed his empty locker, they asked if anyone had heard from him. No one had.

It would not be his last time playing professional soccer while on the run. Capiatá was only the beginning, proof of what he could get away with.

As the manhunt for Marset grew, he doubled down on his double life as a professional player. He attempted to expand his soccer empire to Europe; he appeared on the starting lineups of new teams in new countries.

It seemed a foolish approach to evading arrest, the kind of arrogance that was destined to backfire.

Except it didn’t.

This is the first of a two-part series. Click on this link to read the second part