While more than 3.5 million people who bought tickets to this year’s World Cup matches were preparing their suitcases and passports to travel to the United States, Canada, and Mexico, a powerful former leader of the Cali cartel was preparing to send a cocaine shipment from his laboratory in the Peruvian Amazon, taking advantage of the massive attendance at the event.
But after several surveillances of his 4×4 truck and his associates, and telephone interceptions, the Anti-Drug Directorate of the Peruvian National Police (Dirandro) captured him in a hotel in the city of Chiclayo where he was staying with his partner on May 12.
The security detail
This is Arcesio Trujillo, a 67-year-old native of Ibagué (Tolima), known in the Peruvian mafia as Viejo Palpatine and who is identified as a former leader of the defunct Cali cartel.
According to the country’s migratory records, ihe entered Peru for the first time in December 2006 and since then has had at least 23 entries, most of them starting in 2023, when he arrived in the country fleeing, according to that country’s police, disputes with Colombian guerrillas and other drug traffickers.
However, in 2026 he entered Peru only twice, before his capture.
It was during this period that intelligence agents followed him as he moved in a black Toyota 4×4 truck and frequented restaurants, accompanied by two Chinese bodyguards.
According to that country’s police, the two Asians arrived in Peru exclusively to protect ‘Viejo Palpatine’ and they do not rule out that they may have links with international criminal organizations interested in Peruvian cocaine.
The laboratory in the Amazon
Within the file against ‘Viejo Palpatine’ there are telephone interceptions of conversations with his associates in which he exerts pressure to accelerate cocaine production, claiming they only had 400 of the 700 kilos he needed to send, according to Peruvian authorities, to the United States during the World Cup.
That shipment, valued at approximately 21 million dollars, was seized the same day ‘Viejo Palpatine’ was captured and departed from his megalaboratory in Bagua, in the Peruvian Amazon.
The drug was destined for the port of Paita, on the northern coast of that country, where it would be transported in hidden compartments in private vehicles, in brick-type packages marked with orange butterflies from where it would be sent abroad through contacts with other international criminal organizations.
Furthermore, among the surveillances to locate the cocaine shipment that was to be sent to the World Cup, the alleged right-hand man of ‘Viejo Palpatine’ appears, identified by the alias Chiqui.
‘Chiqui’ was followed to ‘Viejo Palpatine’s laboratory in the Peruvian Amazon.
(See all articles from EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit here)
Now, Colombian authorities are seeking to establish whether alias Viejo Palpatine had drug trafficking businesses in the country.
And if he acquired luxurious assets with money from illicit activities.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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