Narcotics czar Jarvis Chimenes Pavão is set to be extradited from Paraguay to his home country of Brazil for drug trafficking, money laundering and leading a criminal ring.
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He is slated to spend 18 years in a Brazilian prison after serving eight years in Paraguay on similar charges.
His lawyers tried to stop the extradition process up until Tuesday, claiming that if sent to Brazil, Pavão could be kidnapped and assassinated. However, Paraguayan Judge Lici Sanchez followed through with Brazil’s legal request.
Pavão's prison time in Paraguay, which ran from Dec. 29, 2009 until Thursday, has been nothing less than luxurious. He continued to run a criminal narcotics enterprise from his extravagant apartment complete with a gym, a heated pool, a game room, several expensive cars and a small plane. Investigators claim the Paraguayan People's Army, EPP, protected Pavão during his supposed imprisonment in the rural northern region of the country.
Lawyers suspect the criminal leader may be implicated in the EPP’s alleged kidnapping and ransom demand involving a father and son in northern Paraguay in 2016.
Between 1994 and 2000, the organized crime leader, known in Brazil as the “Drug Baron,” ran a narcotics ring and laundered money through a shell beer company in Pedro Juan Caballero, a Paraguayan border city with Brazil, in order to transport cocaine and marijuana to Colombia.
According to investigators, Pavão’s criminal empire ran from Brazil to Bolivia. In Brazil, his drug ring distributed narcotics from San Pablo to the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and then onto the coastal cities of Balneario Camboriu and Itajai, where 80 percent of the drugs were sold.