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A photo of the cocaine found in the premises of the Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires. Undated photo sent to Reuters on February 22, 2018. Argentina Ministry of Security / Handout via REUTERS
This is the latest episode in a bizarre case of cocaine trafficking between Argentina and Russia: the alleged organizer of the network was extradited from Germany to Moscow. It is his lawyer who announces it. Russian Andrei Kovalchuk was arrested in March in Brandenburg on the basis of a Russian international arrest warrant.
Andrei Kovalchuk is suspected of having used a dependency of the Russian embassy in Buenos Aires, in this case the Russian school, to store nearly 400 kg of cocaine in 16 suitcases. The narcotics were discovered by the Argentinean police in December 2016 on the denunciation of Ambassador Viktor Koronelli.
The investigators then mounted an operation to expose the organizers of the network. They had replaced the 400 kg of drugs with 400 kg of flour and placed tags on the load, which was eventually sent to Moscow several months later.
Two men responsible for receiving the goods were then arrested. The investigation then goes back to the presumed sponsor: Andrei Kovalchuk, a businessman who specializes in the spirits trade, who had his entry at the Russian Embassy in Argentina and was then living in Germany.
An international arrest warrant is issued and the man is arrested a few days later in Brandenburg. He rejects these accusations, denouncing a provocation claiming that the shipment of cognac and expensive tobacco he planned to send to Russia through the diplomatic bag had been unwittingly replaced by cocaine at the embassy.
According to his lawyer, quoted by the Russian media, Andrei Kovalchuk was extradited last Friday, unexpectedly and 10 days before the end of the legal period to appeal the decision of the German justice.