A criminal group carried out a million-dollar robbery on one of the busiest streets in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, taking the country's authorities by surprise. The plan was revealed by the program Fantasticthis Sunday (11).
According to information, the gang built a tunnel for more than a year without anyone noticing and stole millions from a money changer's safe. The target was the Paraguayan Foreign Exchange Workers Association, where foreign currency traders kept the amount.
Police investigations led authorities to discover a long-term plan by the criminals, which would have started in 2022, when they rented a property and set up a store that sold sports t-shirts, as a shell business. The place served as a base to build a 180 meter tunnel, which would pass under a bank and in the future allow access to the vault.
The stolen safe is located in the basement of a kind of kiosk. Upon arriving there, underground, the gang broke a side wall in the safe room and gained access to the 148 drawers – which are smaller safes. Each Paraguayan exchanger has their own. The bandits took the money and even gold.
“It's unbelievable! How are you going to cross the street? They crossed three streets, a building and a bank”, said the president of the association.
There is still no exact information about the amounts taken in the robbery. Estimates reported by scalpers range from US$2 million to US$16 million, equivalent to R$80 million. According to the Paraguayan police, only three money changers went to the police station to report the crime.
According to details obtained by Fantástico, after opening a hole in the floor of the store they rented, the criminals dug a vertical shaft seven meters deep to begin the tunnel. The first part of the construction is 100 meters long in a space approximately 70 cm high by 70 cm wide, where it is only possible to crawl.
In the section where the terrain is most rocky, they made a small curve and then began excavating the last 27 meters upwards, in a steep climb until reaching the money changer association's safe room.
The first police officers who accessed the underground passage said it took them more than three hours crawling to cross the 180 meters, amidst a lot of humidity, mud and even sewage.
Investigators also reported that, to circulate air inside, the criminals used fans and opened the way with special tools such as diamond-tipped drills and liquid dynamite. Communication was made via a wired telephone, according to police officers.
The authorities came across explosives on the way, placed as a trap at the location, which were not detonated with the police present because a connector was missing in the system.
Paraguayan investigators, who had support from the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) in the operation, say they have already identified three suspects. The couple who rented the property and a man who had links to the PCC, one of the largest criminal factions in the world.
The PF has helped monitor two other suspects, also linked to the PCC, who were believed to be the leaders of the attack on the money changer association. One of them has already been arrested for bank robbery and the other is being investigated for weapons trafficking. “These people have proven links to the criminal organization. So, we are investigating the possibility that they orchestrated this theft”, said the chief delegate of the Federal Police in Foz do Iguaçu, Marco Smith.
The authorities responsible for the case discovered that during the tunnel construction period, the two people allegedly involved crossed the border with Paraguay several times. So far, there is no confirmation of arrests.
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