The Federal Police (PF) is looking for Antônio Joaquim Mota, known as “Motinha” or “Dom” – and identified by the PF as a mega-trafficker on the border between Brazil and Paraguay.
The suspect was the main target of an operation launched on Friday (30) to arrest him, but he found out about it and fled the day before by helicopter, according to investigators.
In this action, six Mota security guards were arrested. The PF says they are Brazilian and foreign paramilitaries with international training and experience in wars. The investigation points out that the six worked as security guards for the president-elect of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, during the electoral campaign.
The PF investigates the leak of information. The operation was carried out jointly with Paraguayan authorities and Brazilian investigators do not rule out the possibility that the leak occurred on the other side of the border.
The PF is investigating whether Mota has protection in the neighboring country. He was on a rural property that stretches across both countries, between Ponta Porã, in Brazil, and Pedro Juan Caballero, in Paraguay.
According to the report, this is the second time that the suspect has fled the operation in less than 2 months. There is information that he also learned of another action and managed to escape in Operation Helix, in May. He was on another family farm in Pedro Juan Caballero.
Profile
Antônio Joaquim Mota is appointed by the PF as the current leader of the so-called “Mota clan”, a family that has been involved in crime for more than 70 years, according to investigations.
He is the third generation of a criminal organization that has already operated in the smuggling of coffee, cigarettes, electronics and that now specializes in international drug trafficking, with great influence in Paraguay and in the border region with Brazil.
Mota even called himself “Dom”, according to the Federal Police, in reference to Dom Corleone, the head of the most powerful criminal family in the “The Godfather” trilogy.
A CNN found that the investigated organization specialized in cocaine trafficking, as it is more expensive. The drug, coming from Bolivia and Colombia, is transported by plane to Paraguay and, from there, is taken by helicopter to the states of São Paulo and Paraná, from where it is dispatched to the ports of Santos (SP), the largest in the world. Brazil, and Itajaí (SC).
Mota was already arrested in the El Patrón phase of the Lava Jato operation in November 2019. According to the PF, the target gang of the operation, at the time, hid US$ 20 million, more than US$ 17 million in a bank in the Bahamas, and the remainder dispersed in Paraguay among money changers, exchange offices, businessmen, politicians and a lawyer.
Friday operation
The “Magnus Dominus” action, launched on Friday (30) took to the streets to dismantle a paramilitary criminal organization at the service of international drug and arms trafficking between Brazil and Paraguay, operating in the cities of Ponta Porã (MS) and Pedro Juan Horseman (PY).
The Federal Court issued 11 search and seizure warrants and 12 arrest warrants against nine Brazilians, one Italian, one Romanian and one Greek, in a complex police operation, with simultaneous outbreak in the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul.
The operation involved more than 100 federal police officers, from the Tactical Operations Command and the Federal Police’s Operational Aviation Coordination.
Source: CNN Brasil
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