Wednesday May 10, 2023 | 8:20 a.m.
The National Government offers a reward of 5 million pesos for those who provide information that allows them to find Esteban Rojas Almada, a 45-year-old moneylender, of Paraguayan nationality, accused of the femicide of his partner, Ferni Cristina Ayala Palacios, who was murdered by two shots at his home in the Zavaleta de Barracas neighborhood last February.
Through Resolution 281/2023, published this Wednesday in the Official Gazette, the Ministry of National Security offered the aforementioned sum “destined for those people who, without having intervened in the criminal acts, provide useful information that allows the arrest of Rojas Almada”; and specified that the defendant -born on January 4, 1978- “weighs a national arrest warrant dated February 20, 2023, and an international one dated February 24, 2023.”
“People who want to provide data must contact the National Rewards Program under the National Directorate of Judicial Cooperation and Public Prosecutors of this Ministry, at the quick access telephone number 134,” the Government indicated.
“The payment of the reward will be made in this Ministry or in the place designated by the representative of this State Portfolio, following a report from the representative of the intervening authority on the merits of the information provided, preserving the identity of the contributor,” it was clarified in the resolution that bears the signature of Minister Aníbal Fernández.
Within this framework, the federal security forces were instructed to disseminate and publish the poster with the image of Rojas Almada, his data, and the reward offered to find him.
The case
Ferni’s murder occurred on Sunday, February 19 of this year, on the first floor of house 187, located on Lavardén street, block 18, of villa 21-24, in the south of the City of Buenos Aires. It all started after the victim’s sister filed a complaint to find out her whereabouts, after repeated failed attempts to contact her.
Upon becoming aware, agents from the 4D police station of the City Police appeared at the young woman’s home. Upon entering the house, they found the body of Ayala Palacios with two bullet wounds to the chest. According to what was verified by her experts, she had been dead for several hours.
As reported in the resolution published today in the Official Gazette, the crime occurred “between 06:00 a.m. on February 19, 2023 and 03:00 a.m. on February 20, 2023.” “The defendant was the victim’s partner and the event was perpetrated through the use of a firearm with which shots were fired that hit the victim’s torso and would have killed him,” he added.
After conducting a survey of testimonies, the investigators found out that the couple had argued that Sunday morning. As a result, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Pablo Recchini —from the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 44— asked Judge Iturralde to issue an arrest warrant to find and arrest Rojas.
The victim’s sister commented that Ferni and Rojas “lived together approximately seven months ago, but they were together a year or a year and a half ago” and although she stated that they “never” saw a situation of violence between them, they did find out that the man had previous partner complaints.
Another of Ferni’s sisters assured that Rojas had a criminal record for “gender violence” and for “homicide”, for which he spent four years in prison. “Something happened: we noticed that he was very jealous. She checked his cell phone, when it rang or a message came, he was attentive to it, he killed her out of jealousy, ”she denounced.
