Around a year after their initial bust, officials in Argentina are still bringing charges in what local news outlets are calling the biggest wildlife case in the nation’s history. The criminal conspiracy case revolves around a high-end hunting outfitter and seven defendants, including hunting guides, a taxidermist, and the two owners of the outfit, who officials have referred to as the “kingpins” of the operation. Prosecutors say it is the first example of poaching and wildlife trafficking being linked to organized crime in Argentina.
The charges range from hunting protected species to trafficking illegal wildlife parts and possessing weapons of war. One of the more severe charges — animal abuse — is related to allegations that the outfitter was trapping and keeping live wild animals in inhumane conditions, including a puma cub, to release for paying hunters.
Officials also tacked on additional charges earlier this year, according to Mongabay, when one of the kingpins and key defendants, Carlos Pablo Escontrela, tried fleeing the country. He was arrested in January at the Tancredo Neves International Bridge that crosses into Brazil.
The other key defendant, Jorge Nestor Noya, is the owner of Caza & Safaris. Prosecutors allege that Escontrela, through his company Los Moros, ran a front operation for Noya’s outfit to make it appear legal and legitimate to traveling hunters. They say Noya, Escontrela, and their accomplices took Europeans and Americans on illegal hunts in different parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, where they regularly targeted protected species. The outfit would then ship the illegal trophies out of the country using falsified documents and help from a middleman, Federico Manuel Testa.
“The organization hunted everything that was prohibited and that the deep pockets of clients could afford,” the Federal Prosecutor’s Office said in a report shared with Insight Crime.
3,000 Trophies, 35 Firearms, and One Live Cub
The initial bust that exposed the alleged crime ring took place one night in August 2024. It involved 13 separate raids coordinated by 70 agents with Argentina’s Environmental Control Brigade.
By the end of the sweeps, agents had seized more than 3,000 hunting trophies (many of them protected native species), along with 35 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition that did not have the proper permits, according to Mongabay. One rifle, chambered in .375, had its serial number filed off, while two other rifles featured illegal built-in suppressors. (This could explain why the charge related to “weapons of war” was added.)
Mongabay reports that agents also found a pen with live peccaries and one live puma cub in captivity at one of the hunting grounds owned by Escontrela during the August 2024 raids. The cub was being kept in an old fuel barrel without water. Although Escontrela’s attorney has denied wrongdoing in both instances, prosecutors allege that the animals were being held there to be hunted later by paying clients.
Noya, who remains under house arrest in Argentina on the current charges, is also wanted in Bolivia for illegally hunting jaguars in a national park. Bolivian authorities have accused Noya of “biocide” and “destruction of natural heritage,” but they have been unable to extradite him because of the pending organized crime case in Argentina, according to Noticias Ambientes. A court date for the Argentina case had not been set as of Thursday, Mongabay reports.
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