Attackers targeted Uruguay’s acting Attorney General at her home following a major drug seizure linked to the country’s most-wanted trafficking suspect, Sebastián Marset, in a sign of the rising influence of violent criminal organizations in Uruguay’s underworld.
In the early hours of September 28, two people entered the home of Uruguayan anti-narcotics prosecutor and acting Attorney General Mónica Ferrero and opened fire in what the government is considering an attempted assassination. Authorities also found a hole in the prosecutor’s backyard in which they believe the suspects planned on placing explosives. No one was injured in the attack.
Two suspects have already been arrested and are believed to be linked to the local drug gang, the Albín. The government is investigating additional people that may have been behind the attack.
“They won’t make us back down, and they’re going to fall. Two have already fallen, and they won’t be the only ones or the last ones to fall,” Uruguay’s interior minister, Carlos Negro, said in a press conference.
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This is the second time Ferrero has been threatened and targeted. The first occurred in 2020 when a molotov cocktail was launched at the Anti-Narcotic Brigade’s office in Montevideo. Afterwards, Ferrero received a threat warning her to stop investigations into cocaine trafficking.
“This is not an isolated incident; it is something that could happen at any time,” Nicolás Centurión, an organized crime analyst with the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (Centro Latinoamericano de Análisis Estratégico – CLAE) told InSight Crime. “There have been warnings about this for at least 15, 20 years, it was clear that this would happen sooner or later.”
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Uruguay has rarely suffered attacks against officials by organized crime, but as the country plays an increasingly important role in the international cocaine trade, global criminal networks have a greater incentive to use violence to protect their illicit activities.
The primary hypothesis is that the recent attack is a response to a more than 2-ton seizure of cocaine linked to the Albín in Punto Espinillo in August. “Why has [Ferrero] become a target for drug traffickers? Well, because she’s doing her job well,” said Centurión.
Both this latest threat against Ferrero and the one in 2020 may be linked to Uruguayan drug trafficker Sebastián Marset. Like this year’s attack, the first attack came shortly after an investigation headed by Ferrero seized around 2 tons of cocaine. Authorities suspect that the cocaine was Marset’s, and the primary suspect in the 2020 attack was an alleged member of Marset’s criminal network.
Marset, who was convicted of drug trafficking in 2013, is currently on the run and wanted for coordinating multi-ton cocaine shipments to Europe. He has also been accused of ordering the assassination of Paraguayan anti-mafia prosecutor Marcelo Pecci. The Albín are suspected of working with Marset to secure cocaine base for local drug dealing and supervising international shipments of cocaine passing through Uruguay.
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Assassinations are uncommon in Uruguay, but violence related to local groups that primarily sell cocaine base has become a major concern in the country. Fighting between rival clans sparked a wave of killings in 2018, and despite cooling off, the country has never returned to pre-2018 levels of homicides.
While these groups tend to be small and focused on local drug dealing, Uruguay became an increasingly used transit country for cocaine during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past year, Uruguay’s authorities have uncovered more and more cases of local groups storing large quantities of cocaine to be loaded onto containers and shipped to Europe. “All these drugs require many weapons and greater organization,” explained Centurión. And as a result, the ties between local groups and international criminal organizations are likely to grow stronger.
Featured image: Authorities seize over two tons of cocaine in Punta Espinillo, Uruguay. The shipment is believed to have been stored by a local gang called the Albín. Credit: Government of Uruguay