For almost a decade, lawyer Carlos Salvatore commanded an organization drug dealer that sent tons of cocaine to Europe and billed more than 400 million euros. His empire, built on powerful contacts and a low media profile, collapsed over a bag of coal with drugs abandoned in a warehouse in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.
The burlap bag was found in March 2012 by employees of a cleaning company. inside there was 6 kilos of cocaine. The Police found another identical package forgotten -or abandoned in revenge for a missed payment- on the same property. Was the beginning of an investigation that ended with a historic 21-year prison sentence for Salvatore.
The lawyer was also accused of leading an organization that laundered millions of dollars obtained from drug trafficking through front men, shell companies and operations in the real estate market.
He did not go to trial in that case: died on May 9, 2019 in a bed at the Argerich Hospital, where he had been admitted for his coronary problems. He was 61 years old. His family found out from the newspapers.
A year later, his mansion of more than 800 square meters located in the heart of Belgrano R was auctioned off. It was the last visible trace of power and money accumulated by Salvatore, considered the main drug lord in Argentine history.
Luxury, power and bribes of the main Argentine drug lord
Although he kept a low public profile, Salvatore did not deprive himself of the luxuries. One of them was to travel to the most coveted tourist destinations. This was confirmed by an email that he sent to a relative, in which he proposed to spend New Year’s Eve in an exclusive resort in Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island, taking care of all expenses. Nor was he lacking in ego, and in addition to highlighting “the exceptional climate, the private beach and the heated pool” of the hotel, the plan had an outstanding point: “My presence.”
Lawyer Carlos Salvatore is considered the main drug lord in Argentine history
The email summed up his business and family driving style: “He moved in an environment where he was the absolute boss”explain to iProfessional a judicial investigator who closely followed the lawyer’s footsteps.
Owner of a box at the stadium Mouth Juniors, also played a role in the internal politics of River Plate. His relationship with businessman Patricio Gorosito, also convicted of drug trafficking, opened up a wide range of contacts for him in Argentina and southern Europe, the final destination for his cocaine shipments.
His influence also reached different sectors of the State. especially to the Customs, key to ensuring that your shipments left the country without problems.
An image Found in 2015 during a raid on Salvatore’s house showed that the Customs scanner had detected the possible presence of drugs in a container that was traveling to Portugal with 500 kilos of cocaine. It was not just any shipment: from there the 12 kilos lost in Lisbon that gave rise to the investigation were released.
It was not the only test. The shed where the coal was loaded had cameras that were suspiciously cut off at key moments. Those images also had to be controlled by customs officials.
In 2020, the Federal Chamber of Resistance revoked the lack of merit of three Customs officials, two from the Quitilipi (Chaco) plant and one from Buenos Aires, who will face a oral trial.
One year after Salvatore’s death, his house located in the heart of Belgrano R was auctioned off
Carbón Blanco, the beginning of the end for the drug lord
The discovery of 12 kilos of cocaine hidden in bags of charcoal in the Lisbon warehouse, in December 2012, started an investigation by the Portuguese Police. Thus, it was determined that the bags belonged to the company “Carbón Vegetal del Litoral SRL”, located in Quitlipi. In that Chaco city, the shipment had been prepared that would later be dispatched from the Port of Buenos Aires to Europe.
The passage through Lisbon was a stopover to then distribute the cocaine by land to Spain, where a kilo cost up to 45,000 euros. Months after the start of the investigation, they kidnapped three containersin Lisbon and Buenos Aires, with a total of 1057.65 kilos of cocaine, a record number in the country.
Salvatore was arrested along with Gorosito, Juan Carlos Pérez Parga, Héctor Roberto and Rubén Félix Esquivel. each had a specific role within the gang: the contact with the coal producers, the logistics to hide the cocaine in double-sewn bags, the procedures to export the shipments and avoid customs controls, and the movement of money to guarantee the distribution of the drug in European soil.
Coal had been the last screen used by Salvatore to get the drug to the old continent. in his record accumulated other criminal casess in which he was accused of sending thousands of kilos of cocaine hidden in shipments of quince, pears and peaches.
The various files that had the lawyer as the protagonist make it difficult to specify the exact number of drugs trafficked by his gang. “We believe that there were at least between seven and eight tons of cocaine sent to Europe over seven years, in different types of shipments,” judicial sources assured iProfessional.
Soccer, drug trafficking and figureheads
In the structure led by Salvatore stood out gourmand, protected by the contacts he had forged as a businessman in the world of football. Founder of Real Arroyo Seco, in Rosario, he came to sign an agreement with the then president of Barcelona, Joan Laporta. The photo of the two of them together, exchanging shirts, was one of his letters of introduction.
In 2015, Gorosito said that he was actually a figurehead for Julio Grondona
Five years after its founding, Gorosito sold its club property to Rosario Central for US$16 million. In 2015, during the trial for drug trafficking, in an interview with La Nación, he said that he was actually figurehead of Julio Grondona and that Real Arroyo Seco was owned by the former president of the AFA, who died the previous year. Although he later denied having claimed that, his explanations left more doubt than certainty.
What did become clear during the investigation was that Gorosito was in charge of reporting the situation of the shipments to Salvatore, who called himself “Manuel Carrascosa”.
One of those conversations, included in the judicial file, recorded the moment in which the businessman told the lawyer that things were not going as they had planned. “The boys are sick,” was Gorosito’s warning. At that time, several of the members of the criminal organization had already been arrested in Lisbon.
The threat to a judge: “I pay for that homicide”
Salvatore was arrested in December 2012. He spent only 15 months in detention. Due to his delicate state of health, he was benefited from house arrest and He returned to his luxurious villa in Belgrano R.
There, during a telephone conversation with his wife, arrested in the investigation for money laundering, he threatened Judge Zunilda Niremperger, who had prosecuted him for the White Coal case. “I’m going to take them out, then I’ll kill her, but first I’ll take you out (…) I don’t care, I don’t care, I pay for this murder, I pay for this murder, but she dies,” he warned.
That scandal complicated his situation. “Happened a bit, if I were to do a parallelism, what happened to “Fat” Value: Nobody knew him until the shock generated by seeing how he escaped from the Devoto jail. I think The same thing happened to him with the threats to Judge Niremperger. When the wiretaps were made public, that projected him to a level of public exposure that seriously undermined his business, which was to pass himself off as a simple lawyer.“, explains to iProfessional the journalist Virginia Messi, who investigated the causes that had Salvatore as the protagonist.
Salvatore was arrested in 2012 but passed only 15 months detained since He was benefited with house arrest
After the threat to the judge, He was transferred to the Ezeiza prison. From there, through a videoconference, he heard how the Chaco Federal Oral Court sentenced him to 21 years in prison for cocaine trafficking. The other convicted were Gorosito, Pérez Parga, Héctor Roberto and Esquivel, with sentences of 19 to 12 years in prison.
During the oral debate the intimidating messages continued. “Carniel, take care of yourself and take care of your family, you have already caused us many problems, they are going to have a very bad time,” warned the note they left for federal prosecutor Federico Carniel, one of the investigators in the “Carbón Blanco” case.
Shortly after, the other prosecutor in the case, Carlos Amad, was also threatened: “Cagón they sent you away but you’re still going to have a bad time, in Salta we have friends, take care of yourself and take care of your family.”
After the sentence, Salvatore left the prison again due to his health problems. He spent some time hospitalized in a suite at the Los Arcos Sanatorium and returned to the Ezeiza prison, where he suffered a decompensation that forced him to be transferred to the Argerich Hospital.
He died on May 9, 2019, on the eve of the trial for laundering money from drug trafficking for which his wife and father-in-law ended up sentenced to seven years in prison.among other members of the band.
As determined by the Justice, to launder the income the criminal organization used “a complex network of commercial companies without real activity, created for the sole purpose of injecting the constant flow of money from drug trafficking, thus disguising its criminal origin.”
The structure led by Salvatore had a wide range of economic activitieswhich ranged from the construction of buildings in Mar del Plata to film production.
Carla Salvatore, the lawyer’s daughter, was also tried, accused of integrating the laundering structure. She was acquitted, but Cassation then annulled the ruling and ordered a review. “I never wanted to be part of his heritage and I don’t want his inheritance. I don’t want anything from him. I have his last name and I will carry that all my life. But being Carla Salvatore does not make me Carlos Salvatore, there is an abyss of difference” , defended himself in an interview with Clarín.
