As Sebastian Marset chased soccer goals, investigators tracked his medicine

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — The undercover brokers ducked right into a squat brick home in a residential neighborhood.

The constructing — secretly rented by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — was now the headquarters of what had turn out to be one in every of Latin America’s most necessary drug-trafficking investigations. It was not going nicely.

The handful of American and Paraguayan brokers had been assigned to search out the person on the middle of a brand new transnational drug cartel dispatching boatloads of cocaine to Europe. The brokers had been sealed off from the remainder of the police to keep away from leaks. However after months of labor, they nonetheless knew little about their goal, besides that he was harmful and well-connected.

Then, someday in 2021, the brokers bought a tip. The person on the middle of the brand new cartel was about to board a personal jet at Silvio Pettirossi Worldwide Airport, simply exterior Asunción, the capital.

Half two of a two-part story

That is the second of a two-part collection. Click on on this hyperlink to learn the primary half, “A double life: The cocaine kingpin who hid as an expert soccer participant.”

As they watched the passengers, one of many males in line stood out. His tattoos matched those that they had heard about on wiretaps of cartel members. When he was requested for his identification, the person took out a Bolivian passport. The brokers have been instantly positive the doc was false. They searched his biometric information, and the title of an Uruguayan nationwide popped up. Sebastián Marset.

“After we heard the title ‘Marset,’ we puzzled: ‘Who is that this man?’” recalled a senior Paraguayan official. “The very first thing we did was Google him and the primary hit was this soccer participant.”

The brokers noticed that their goal had till not too long ago been a midfielder on Deportivo Capiatá, a crew that performed not removed from their rented workplace. Marset had used his wealth and energy to meet a boyhood dream of taking part in skilled soccer, despite the fact that his expertise fell far wanting the extent required.

Phrase unfold amongst high-level Paraguayan officers, a few of them soccer fanatics, who puzzled if that they had unwittingly watched their goal play.

“I couldn’t consider that on the middle of this huge legal group, the chief was a failed soccer participant,” stated Cecilia Pérez Rivas, the justice minister.

Investigators stated they didn’t simply wish to detain Marset on the airport, in order that they allowed him to board the airplane; the aim was to construct a case to dismantle his cartel. Over the following months, Paraguayan brokers started trailing him.

They adopted him as he drove an armored Toyota Land Cruiser to Asunción’s La Galería shopping center, the place he met alleged Brazilian drug trafficker Marlon Santos Silva Beiño; in a white BMW to a pastry store, the place he met Alberto Koube Ayala, the Paraguayan businessman who investigators stated was answerable for laundering a few of Marset’s drug proceeds. Neither Beiño nor Ayala may very well be reached for remark.

They chronicled the best way Marset created shell firms throughout Latin America’s non-public sector, paying for publicity in native media so the companies appeared professional, investigation paperwork present. Marset touted his success as a music producer (“a legend of live performance manufacturing,” stated an article on an Ecuadorian information web site) or the proprietor of a luxurious automotive dealership (“high quality service for each type of car,” stated a Paraguayan auto journal) or the benefactor of a martial arts studio referred to as Workforce Drive Coaching Heart (its slogan: “To Battle Is to Dwell”).

Investigators began to really feel as in the event that they have been chasing a Zelig-like determine who gave the impression to be in a number of locations on the identical time. They struggled to discern which of his companies existed solely on paper and which have been actual. They puzzled what had turn out to be of his soccer profession after he disappeared from Capiatá.

“He’s clearly very good,” stated one Paraguayan investigator. “And he’s additionally a sociopath.”

Sooner or later, two undercover brokers adopted a silver Lamborghini by way of the residential sprawl on the fringe of Asunción. The brokers drove an unmarked truck that they had seized in a earlier operation, retaining a distance from their goal.

Over a two-way radio, they reported their coordinates again to headquarters, one agent recalled. They relayed what they have been seeing: Marset had inexplicably detoured by way of the potholed roads of a no-name neighborhood.

Then the brokers watched as he pulled up in entrance of a soccer stadium and turned off the engine.

One of many brokers, clearly shocked, picked up the radio to report the discovering: “He discovered one other crew.”

II

Marset’s latest toy was a second-division crew referred to as Rubio Ñu. Its stadium was about 20 miles from Capiatá.

The crew performed in a middle-class neighborhood in Paraguay’s capital, stuffed with die-hard however perpetually dissatisfied Rubio Ñu followers. Some had painted their properties within the crew’s colours, inexperienced and white. Many have been the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Rubio supporters. The stadium confirmed indicators of decay. The grass on the sphere was patchy.

Followers traded rumors in regards to the man within the Lamborghini. He arrived with a small group of males, all of their 20s and 30s, some with Uruguayan accents. Nearly instantly, he began funneling cash to the crew.

“We have been like, ‘What’s going on right here?’” stated one neighbor, who lives throughout the road from the stadium and spoke on the situation of anonymity for safety causes. “Lots of people have been scared. It was like a bunch of mafiosos had descended on us.”

Inside a couple of weeks of Marset’s arrival, he employed a development crew to construct a brand new locker room. This time, he practiced with the crew, however didn’t play in video games.

After observe, he deployed the identical anodyne one-liners that he utilized in texts to the drug traffickers who labored for him:

“All the time be one step forward my bro,” he wrote.

Marset appointed his brother Diego Marset as an middleman between his drug-trafficking group and the crew, investigators stated. Diego went on a recruiting spree, including 11 veteran gamers. He couldn’t be reached for remark.

The brokers realized that as Sebastián Marset moved between soccer groups, he was additionally taking part in with methods the game may very well be used to show illicit funds into clear money. He was increasing, they wrote in a 500-page Paraguayan report, “the universe of soccer inside his cash laundering scheme.”

At Rubio Ñu, investigators famous, Marset’s focus was on shopping for and promoting gamers — one of many oldest types of laundering cash by way of sport.

Officers at Rubio Ñu declined to remark.

It could later turn out to be clear what Marset had in thoughts, in accordance with investigators: He recognized a crew in Europe with its personal connections to transnational crime. He would promote his Paraguayan gamers there. Transferring Latin American gamers to middling European groups for inflated charges — fronted by the vendor, not the customer, or by recording pretend transactions — has turn out to be an more and more widespread approach of laundering drug cash, officers say.

“They purchase a Colombian participant from a really low-level soccer crew after which take him to play within the Croatian Soccer League. However they promote him for 100 instances or 200 instances greater than what he price,” stated a Colombian police official, referring to at least one case wherein Albanian drug traffickers laundered cash by way of soccer transfers, offering money for the transaction.

By August 2021, the American and Paraguayan investigators have been getting nearer to arresting their goal. They’d provide you with a reputation for his or her investigation, “A Ultranza,” which suggests “At All Prices.” It was already the largest anti-narcotics investigation in Paraguay’s historical past. They’d sufficient documentation to supply not less than 50 indictments concentrating on Marset and his associates, investigators stated.

Then in September 2021, Marset vanished once more.

The Individuals acquired contemporary intelligence: He was not hiding in Paraguay. He had evaded the surveillance. This time, he had left the continent.

III

When the Uruguayan diplomat stepped by way of the excessive partitions of Al Wathba jail, surrounded by the Emirati desert, he defined to guards that he had come for a consular go to with a brand new detainee from his nation.

The guards requested for the prisoner’s title.

“Marset,” the diplomat stated, earlier than strolling into the holding cell.

Marset was sleeping on the ground of the jail with a blanket, in solitary confinement, in accordance with an Uruguayan diplomatic cable.

One of many world’s most elusive drug traffickers had lastly been caught. However it hadn’t been for trafficking medicine. Marset was detained on the Dubai airport, the place authorities stated he had used a pretend Paraguayan passport.

“He had lastly slipped up,” stated a Paraguayan official.

U.S. officers made a case to their Emirati counterparts: In the event that they didn’t strictly implement his detention till an arrest warrant may very well be issued by Paraguay, Marset would bribe or finagle his approach out of custody.

They have been proper. From his jail cell, Marset started a marketing campaign to acquire a brand new passport and safe his launch, an effort later documented by Uruguayan and Paraguayan authorities. For causes that stay unclear, Paraguay was unable or unwilling to challenge an arrest warrant after studying of Marset’s detention.

The Uruguayan authorities, in the meantime, acknowledged Marset as a risk but additionally failed to forestall his launch.

“A narco,” Uruguay’s chief consul, Pauline Davies, wrote of Marset in a WhatsApp message to the nation’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Álvaro Ceriani, on Sept. 21. The message was a part of a trove of paperwork collected by Uruguayan investigators and offered to The Washington Publish.

“A really harmful and heavy drug trafficker,” Guillermo Maciel, Uruguay’s deputy inside minister, wrote to Carolina Ache, the nation’s deputy international minister on Nov. 3.

Marset employed high-profile attorneys who organized conferences with senior Uruguayan officers, paperwork present. The crew was well-connected: Marset’s prime authorized adviser, Alejandro Balbi, was the president of Nacional, one in every of the nation’s most well-known soccer golf equipment. Balbi declined to remark.

Marset utilized for a brand new Uruguayan passport to be delivered to him in Dubai.

By November, regardless of the warnings in regards to the hazard he posed, the brand new passport was being processed. Neither Uruguay’s International Ministry nor its Inside Ministry, which grants passports, intervened, in accordance with Uruguayan investigators.

Whereas he waited to be launched, utilizing a cellphone he had obtained, Marset sought revenge.

He allegedly ordered gunmen to kill Mauricio Schwartzman, the person answerable for securing the Paraguayan passport that had landed Marset in jail, investigators stated. Two males utilizing a 5.56-caliber rifle and a 9mm pistol confronted Schwartzman in entrance of his luxurious residence in Asunción and shot him useless.

Paraguayan investigators later heard over their wiretaps that the gunmen had been ordered to hold out the hit by the “large boss” of a cocaine-trafficking group, apparently alluding to Marset.

“Based on the large boss, it was [Schwartzman’s] fault that the passport had issues,” the affiliate stated.

A high-profile Paraguayan prosecutor, Marcelo Pecci, was assigned to analyze the case. Pecci later advised journalists he believed Schwartzman might have been executed by one of many individuals focused within the joint U.S.-Paraguayan investigation into Marset’s cartel.

Lower than a yr later, in Could 2022, Pecci could be killed on his honeymoon at a personal seashore resort in Colombia. Simply hours earlier, his spouse had introduced that she was pregnant. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, stated Marset was answerable for the killing. (Marset subsequently denied any position within the killing when questioned by a Uruguayan journalist.)

However lengthy earlier than that slaying, with Marset detained, investigators had one other query to reply: What was Marset doing in Dubai within the first place?

They’d later discover photographs of him dressed as a sheikh with a hawk on his biceps, on the prime of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper along with his spouse, on a desert tour with alleged Bolivian drug trafficker Erland Ivar García López. Actual property information reviewed by The Publish present that Marset owned greater than $18 million value of actual property in Dubai. Emirati officers didn’t reply to requests for remark.

When investigators obtained Marset’s flight information, they discovered that Dubai hadn’t been his last vacation spot. He had been planning a visit to Greece.

“We began to ask: ‘What enterprise did he have in Greece?’” stated a Paraguayan investigator.

IV

Trikala F.C. is a crew based mostly in central Greece, 200 miles northwest of Athens, a longtime fixture within the Greek Tremendous League 2. Its low-slung stadium, the place solely a handful of followers sit throughout residence video games, is a brief stroll from an Early Bronze Age acropolis.

The crew’s fan base had diminished not solely as Trikala continued to lose however as its hyperlinks to organized crime and match-fixing have been uncovered. Earlier this yr, its former proprietor, Christos Gialia, was shot greater than a dozen instances with a Kalashnikov rifle and burned in his automotive in a mafia-style killing. He had beforehand been arrested on prices of arms and drug trafficking. The crew’s president, Sakis Karatzounis, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2017 after being present in possession of 20 kilos of cocaine, and served 4 years in jail.

Trikala F.C. generally recruited international coaches, who have been shocked by what they discovered. In 2021, the crew employed David Magrone, a former member of the teaching employees at Tottenham Hotspur in England’s Premier League. Magrone left after 10 days, telling soccer journalists that he was scandalized.

“It’s probably the most amateurish and unprofessional setting I’ve ever stepped into,” Magrone stated in an interview with FTBL, an Australian soccer web site. “It was just like the wild wild West and I don’t say that calmly.”

Magrone stated he was conscious of the crew’s potential involvement in match fixing. However Trikala’s illicit actions appeared to run deeper.

Just a few weeks after Magrone’s departure, in September 2021, an SUV arrived at Trikala’s stadium carrying 4 Paraguayan gamers and several other coaches and trainers. One coach, Manuel Caceres, instantly began paying the crew’s Greek staff in money, in accordance with Trikala gamers, and started speaking about plans to purchase the crew. Caceres couldn’t be reached for remark.

The gamers and employees have been baffled, whilst they relished the sudden wave of recent sources.

“Why did they arrive from Paraguay to speculate on the opposite aspect of the Atlantic, in Trikala? It was an honor for us, okay, however isn’t it bizarre?” Zissis Katsandonis, the crew supervisor, stated in an interview. “However regardless of the crew requested them for, we bought. Garments, tools. Every thing was ordered immediately. All paid for.”

The Paraguayans would distribute wads of money within the locker room, stated Giorgos Panagiotou, Trikala’s common secretary. “Come, guys, to the altering rooms and take it,” he recalled them saying.

What the Greek gamers and officers didn’t know was that the Paraguayans had been dispatched by Sebastián Marset, who was en path to Greece when he was detained in Dubai. After his arrest, in accordance with a wiretapped dialog, he had despatched his associates as a substitute.

Two of the gamers and Caceres, the coach, had come from Marset’s final Paraguayan crew, Rubio Ñu. They have been among the many males Marset’s associates had been grooming, promising money in the event that they performed nicely. Marset, investigators discovered, supplied every of them $200,000 in the event that they have been prepared to be transferred to an obscure Greek crew. They accepted.

Paraguayan investigators say Marset hoped to make use of Trikala to launder money and create a foothold in Greece to develop his drug-trafficking community. The Greek anti-narcotics police stated they have been unaware of Marset’s connection to the crew, maybe due to how rapidly it dissolved. Together with his detention in Dubai, Marset’s Trikala scheme fell aside, investigators stated.

On the finish of 2021, the Paraguayan gamers and coaches left as abruptly as that they had arrived.

“At the very least it was sudden for me. I didn’t know something,” stated Katsandonis, the supervisor. “All of them left Trikala earlier than Christmas. I don’t know the place they went after that.”

Two of the gamers, apparently broke, returned to Paraguay on a authorities repatriation flight, accompanied by migrant deportees.

V

On Jan. 10, 2022, Interpol wrote a message to Uruguay’s International Ministry: “We’d admire in case you might present us with an replace on its state of affairs and particulars of the place [Marset] is at the moment.”

Each the U.S. and Paraguayan investigators had assumed their goal was nonetheless detained in Dubai.

However the Uruguayan International Ministry responded two days later: “The Consulate delivered the passport to the holder and we’ve got not had any details about the citizen since then.”

Marset was a free man.

“With the affect of his wealth and connections, he gained,” stated a U.S. official.

A couple of month later, on Feb. 22, Paraguayan authorities carried out Operation A Ultranza, based mostly on their multiyear investigation into Marset’s group. Twenty-four of his associates have been arrested, most of them on drug-trafficking and money-laundering prices. Police raided luxurious properties and airplane hangars. They seized 9 non-public jets, 4,000 head of cattle, 13 tractors and three yachts — in complete, greater than $100 million in belongings.

Erico Galeano, the Paraguayan senator whose soccer crew had welcomed Marset, was accused of cash laundering. However the authorities’s help for Galeano was clear: Weeks after his arrest, he was invited to a small soccer recreation on the president’s residence.

On March 7, Interpol issued a global arrest warrant in Marset’s title. However by then, he was as soon as once more a fugitive. Information broke in Uruguay about how he had managed to safe a brand new passport from a jail in Dubai.

The fallout was nearly quick. First the international minister resigned. Then the inside minister and one in every of his chief advisers. However Uruguay’s president, Luis Lacalle Pou, stated the issue was Uruguay’s legal guidelines, not corruption inside his authorities.

“Will we like {that a} drug trafficker has a passport? In fact not,” Lacalle Pou stated at a information convention. “However that’s the present legislation.”

VI

The cellphone buzzed within the newsroom of Channel 4, one in every of Uruguay’s hottest broadcasters. It was a textual content message from a South African quantity.

The sender launched himself as Sebastián Marset.

It was August 2022, months after his launch from the Dubai jail. Marset despatched a video message to reporters, who aired it on the nightly broadcast of “Telenoche.” He was fuming in regards to the prices towards him and his associates.

“They don’t have any proof of something of what they are saying. Nothing,” he stated within the video, wherein he wears sun shades and a face masks.

U.S., Paraguayan and Uruguayan officers have been looking for him as soon as once more. The medicine flowing from Bolivia to Uruguay and on to Europe had elevated. Investigators believed he was nonetheless working the operation, from wherever he was.

Then the tip arrived.

Marset was in Bolivia. However he wasn’t simply hiding there.

He was taking part in for an additional skilled soccer crew.

VII

The gamers of the Leones del Torno, a crew in a second-tier Bolivian league, have been on their twentieth and last 100-yard dash.

Carlos Villegas, a lanky 25-year-old Colombian ahead, completed first. He put his fingers on his knees and turned, he recalled in an interview, to look at his teammates trundle throughout the road, struggling within the Bolivian warmth. It was Could 2023.

As all the time, among the many slowest gamers was a good-looking, tattooed Brazilian named Luis Amorim.

There was one thing odd about Amorim, Villegas thought. He was out of practice and sluggish on the sphere. However he was all the time impeccably dressed and drove a rotation of shiny SUVs — Land Cruisers and BMWs — throughout Santa Cruz, the place the Leones had not too long ago moved.

Whereas Villegas struggled to scrape by on his $500-a-month wage, portray properties to make additional money, Amorim was seemingly flush. Villegas wanted to know: How had his teammate discovered monetary success whereas languishing within the decrease rungs {of professional} soccer? He determined he would ask.

After observe, Villegas sidled as much as Amorim on a bench subsequent to the sphere.

“How did you do it, man?”

Amorim responded passionately, however obliquely — in surprisingly excellent Spanish for a Brazilian.

“It’s all about work. It is advisable work and work and work. You may’t ever surrender,” Villegas recalled Amorim saying.

Villegas walked away from the dialog feeling impressed and a bit of confused.

“He by no means advised me what he did to make the cash,” Villegas later stated in an interview. “And after I came upon, it was a shock.”

Amorim was a pseudonym.

Marset had arrived in Santa Cruz — Bolivia’s monetary capital — in late 2022, renovating a mansion within the middle of the town, putting in safety cameras close to the entrance entrance. He launched himself into the town’s elite circles. He hung out with a former Miss Bolivia and her husband. He sponsored occasions for Carnival, together with an exhibition soccer recreation with highly effective enterprise executives. And most notably, he bought the Leones del Torno, a crew that performed within the small city of El Torno, an hour exterior the town.

Marset moved the crew to Santa Cruz. He constructed a cutting-edge athletic coaching advanced with an artificial turf subject on the finish of a dust highway. He employed a former star participant from the nationwide crew, Gualberto Mojica, to educate the crew. And as soon as once more, he compelled his approach onto the beginning lineup.

With legislation enforcement from throughout the Western Hemisphere on the lookout for him, Marset had chosen to not conceal in a distant outpost. He had come to Bolivia’s largest metropolis — often called a sanctuary for drug proceeds, investigators say — sure that he might bribe authorities to not seize him.

For over a yr, Marset gave the impression to be proper; he expanded his actual property empire in Santa Cruz, both unnoticed or ignored.

On the soccer subject, Marset wore the quantity 23, David Beckham’s quantity at Actual Madrid and Galaxy. The title on the again of his blue jersey was solely “Luis.” His expertise had not improved.

“He wasn’t good,” stated a Uruguayan participant on the Leones, Lucas Casavieja.

“Once I handed him the ball, a number of the time he missed it,” stated Villegas. “I bought offended with him, like, ‘What are you doing?’”

In Could 2023, Bolivian authorities bought a name from the Paraguayan anti-narcotics police. The Paraguayans had tracked down Marset in Santa Cruz, they usually wanted the Bolivians to behave.

The Bolivian police say they started surveilling Marset’s mansion. They flew a drone overhead. They posted officers round his tony neighborhood. Marset was hiding along with his spouse and 4 youngsters, who have been additionally utilizing false names. He had managed to enroll one in every of his sons within the revered coaching program of Blooming, a soccer crew in Bolivia’s first division.

Finally, police held a planning session to announce the operation, dubbed “Leon 23” after Marset’s crew and quantity. They deliberate to take down Marset’s total community.

Dozens of officers bought to his home on the morning of July 29, forcing their approach inside. However Marset and his household have been gone.

A manhunt commenced: 3,000 Bolivian cops have been dispatched. They positioned 158 checkpoints throughout the nation to maintain Marset from escaping.

The police finally arrested 39 individuals, together with the Leones del Torno coach, two of Marset’s teammates and the crew’s grounds supervisor. They seized the crew’s soccer subject, 35 properties, 9 plane, 77 vehicles, 81 weapons and 1,315 head of livestock and poultry — a complete of $27 million in belongings.

Leones del Torno have been suspended from Bolivia’s soccer federation. Former crew officers couldn’t be reached for remark.

Officers and neighbors in Santa Cruz would later inform The Publish that Marset had fled days earlier than the operation started. Neighbors reported seeing individuals loading vans exterior Marset’s residence.

“The operation wanted to be earlier,” Jhonny Aguilera, Bolivia’s deputy inside minister and former nationwide police chief, stated in an interview. “We all know that in hindsight.”

Marset’s teammates and coach have been charged with “legal affiliation.” Their interrogation interviews yielded little: He was merely “one other participant,” they stated. “An investor” or a “businessman.”

However Bolivian officers stated they have been in a position to hyperlink Marset’s attraction to the Leones to 2 information factors — his obsession with soccer and the extra sensible query of what to do along with his drug proceeds.

“The target was clearly to launder cash,” Aguilera stated of Marset’s funding in Leones del Torno.

IX

Just a few weeks after Marset’s disappearance, Jessica Echeverría, a lawyer in Santa Cruz with a big following on social media, acquired a message from a quantity she didn’t acknowledge.

When she opened it, there was a video with Marset’s face within the middle of the body. Echevarría pressed play. She heard Marset clarify how he had been tipped off in regards to the Bolivia operation.

“Because of the assistance of the director of the anti-narcotics police, I managed to go away,” Marset stated within the video. “He advised me that the minister had already issued an arrest warrant towards me.”

Just a few weeks later, he despatched out one other video to native reporters. It was recorded from inside a automotive.

“I’m too good for you,” he stated, taunting the Bolivian police. “It’s to not say that you’re very silly; it sounds a bit of higher to say that I’m simply smarter.”

He threatened to disclose the corrupt Bolivian officers who had allowed him to dwell freely and escape unhurt: “If I open my mouth, it will get sophisticated.”

The query of the place Marset was hiding grew to become a parlor recreation amongst Latin American officers. At the very least a couple of starry-eyed followers additionally waited for him to reemerge, hoping he may very well be lured by one in every of his weaknesses.

“Between soccer and lovers, I’m gripped by the hope that Don Marset will return,” crooned Bolivian singer Belén Ortiz in her tune “King of the South.”

After which, in November, Marset gave a tv interview.

An Uruguayan tv anchor, Patricia Martín, stated she had taken two helicopters to fulfill him — the primary to a spot that was “half jungle” and the second to a home in a clearing. Marset opened the door, she stated; a soccer recreation was taking part in on the lounge tv. He wore a $1,100 Louis Vuitton inexperienced sweater and a gold watch and spoke vaguely about his potential to elude seize.

“I’ve individuals to do what I must do,” he stated.

Marset’s lawyer, Santiago Moratorio, who helped prepare the tv look, wouldn’t say the place it occurred, or supply any hints about his shopper’s latest hiding place.

On Wednesday, after months of radio silence, Marset’s spouse, Gianina García Troche, was detained on the Madrid airport in a joint operation of Interpol and the Spanish authorities. She had flown to Spain from Dubai, Uruguayan and Paraguayan officers stated.

Moratorio stated she wasn’t detained and insisted that she had turned herself in. “She was bored with working from a criminal offense she didn’t commit,” he stated.

Marset stays at giant, the goal of an ongoing manhunt, some of the intensive in current South American historical past.

Moratorio did share one element from the go to he made with the journalist to Marset’s undisclosed location.

Earlier than the tv interview was recorded, Moratorio stated, Marset issued yet one more order: Let’s play some soccer. His guests, guards and associates shaped two groups and the sport kicked off.

That is the second of a two-part collection. Click on on this hyperlink to learn the primary half, “A double life: The cocaine kingpin who hid as an expert soccer participant.”