How SA features in the web of ‘most-wanted' Uruguayan narcotrafficking accused Sebastian Marset

Daily Maverick

a day ago

A video of wanted drug trafficking accused Sebastian Marset previously sparked suspicions about South Africa and Uruguay's most powerful cocaine cartel. Now, the US has stepped in and offered a $2m reward for his arrest.
A man wearing big sunglasses and a medical mask faces the camera as he talks in Spanish while seated in what appears to be a stationary car.
The footage is somewhat wobbly, suggesting he's holding a cellphone and filming himself.
This man says he is Sebastian Marset – a suspected international drug trafficker and money launderer from Uruguay, who is involved in South American soccer, and who has an astounding past that bleeds into high-level political scandals.
The 34-year-old, whose full name is Sebastian Enrique Marset Cabrera, is accused of heading the Primer Cartel Uruguayo, or First Uruguayan Cartel.
He was recently added to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) most wanted list.
In May 2025, the DEA also offered a reward of up to $2-million for information leading to Marset's arrest.
That reward is linked to the biggest investigation into cocaine trafficking in Paraguay's history.
South Africa and suspicions
A few years ago, in August 2022, the video of Marset, showing him talking while apparently seated in a car, was sent to overseas media.
In it, he distanced himself from several accusations.
This country fits into this saga because the video was apparently sent from a South African cellphone number.
That same month, August 2022, international affairs prosecutor Manuel Doldan was quoted in Paraguayan media saying Marset's location was under investigation to determine if he had been in South Africa or if technology was used to mask where the video was actually sent from.
Emails from Daily Maverick to an address listed for Doldan were not responded to last week.
The Embassy of Uruguay in South Africa told Daily Maverick: 'The Embassy… does not have any comments regarding your questions.'
When Daily Maverick asked the Hawks if Marset had been flagged in this country, spokesperson Colonel Katlego Mogale asked if this journalist had a case number.
The journalist did not have a case number and did not query a specific crime, but whether authorities were aware of Marset.
No answer was provided by the time of publication as to whether the Hawks had flagged him.
In 2023, police in Bolivia tried to arrest Marset, who later released another video effectively thanking officers there for tipping him off about that plan.
Several other issues tied to Marset, meanwhile, are indirectly connected to South Africa.
Detained, Dubai, released
Dubai is central to one of these.
Daily Maverick has before reported on how a drug trafficking 'supercartel', consisting of various crime groups from several countries, was headquartered there.
The so-called supercartel appeared to have ties to places including Durban.
As for Marset, in 2021 he was detained in Dubai because of an issue relating to a false passport.
He managed to get another passport while in custody – this became a scandal that saw the resignation of Uruguayan government officials – and was released from Dubai detention in early 2022.
Marset, according to the US, is now ' a most-wanted fugitive throughout the Southern Cone of South America, charged with organised crime violations in Paraguay and Bolivia'.
Brazil
There were previous suspicions that he may have been in Mozambique.
These were similar to suspicions, some later confirmed, that once surrounded Brazil's Gilberto Aparecido Dos Santos, who headed the notorious First Capital Command gang, to which Marset is suspected of having ties.
Daily Maverick has previously reported that Dos Santos used false documents in South Africa under the name of Luiz Gomes de Jesus before he was arrested in Mozambique in 2020.
In 2022, Dos Santos was sentenced to 26 years in jail in Brazil for crimes including drug trafficking.
Strong narco-conduits connect South Africa and Brazil.
Marset's alleged drug trafficking organisation operated via various countries, including Brazil.
Transnational money laundering
Last month, on 21 May, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced that an indictment against Marset had been unsealed 'for his alleged role in laundering proceeds of his drug-trafficking organisation'.
A statement also said that Federico Ezequiel Santoro Vassallo, also known as Capitan, was someone close to Marset and had pleaded guilty to laundering narco-trafficking income.
It alleged Marset was the head 'of a large-scale drug trafficking organisation that distributed thousands of kilograms of cocaine, including as many as ten tons at a time, from South America typically to Europe.'
🇵🇾 | Paraguay dismissed an alleged letter sent by Sebastián Marset in which he offered to turn himself in in exchange for his wife's freedom. Learn more about this character and his criminal network here: https://t.co/l0GFP7jPS7 pic.twitter.com/FnwepimKTW
— InSight Crime (@InSightCrime) June 6, 2025
Cocaine was allegedly trafficked in places including Bolivia, Paraguay, Belgium and Brazil.
'Santoro and, allegedly, Marset threatened violence to protect their drug-trafficking and money laundering activities,' the US attorney's office statement said.
'In January 2021, Marset allegedly was owed more than €17-million from the proceeds of a single shipment of cocaine.
'Santoro arranged the collection and laundering of at least €5-million of those funds, the vast majority of which was laundered using the US banking system.'
As for Marset, the $2-million reward (which is in addition to a $100,000 reward Bolivia offered in 2023) for his arrest and conviction came about after a project codenamed Operation A Ultranza Py.
Reward poster for Sebastian Marset, US Department of State.
The US described it as: 'The largest and most consequential organised crime investigation… against cocaine trafficking in Paraguayan history.'
In the family
Last year, Marset's partner Gianina García Troche was detained in Spain.
She was reportedly extradited from there to Paraguay a couple of weeks ago.
🇵🇾 | Gianina García Troche landed in Paraguay following extradition for her alleged role in Sebastián Marset's money laundering network. Learn more about her case on others facing charges in our analysis: https://t.co/ELqc2V6ato pic.twitter.com/sxEnOf7IYA
— InSight Crime (@InSightCrime) May 21, 2025
The year before her detention, in December 2023, Marset's brother Diego Nicolás Marset Alba, who is now about 24 years old, was arrested in Brazil.
'[He] had been avoiding arrest for many years by using multiple false identities from Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay,' a statement by the international police organisation, Interpol, said at the time.
The timing of the younger Marset's arrest was connected to his wife's pregnancy.
'Interpol shared intelligence that his wife was nearing childbirth in Foz de Iguacu, Brazil,' the statement said.
'Foreseeing Marset's potential visit to Brazil for the birth, officers from Brazil's Federal Police monitored the wife's residence and arrested the fugitive when he arrived at her home.'
Interpol's statement said that Diego Marset was suspected of being 'a central figure in the trafficking of drugs from South America to Europe and is also linked to several high-profile killings.'
Prosecutor killed in Colombia
Accusations around the elder Marset and one specific high-profile 2022 killing emerged previously.
In May 2022, Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Daniel Pecci Albertini, better known as Marcelo Pecci, was fatally shot on a beach while on honeymoon with his wife in Colombia.
Pecci worked against drug trafficking and organised crime.
The US Department of State had offered a $5-million reward for information leading to Pecci's killers.
Information regarding the co-conspirators should be reported to the Paraguayan Public Ministry and the Drug Enforcement Administration. https://t.co/0Emg3gbUBF pic.twitter.com/dGpxPzzmcC
— US Dept of State INL (@StateINL) November 17, 2022
'Five of… six individuals were arrested in Colombia and quickly convicted and sentenced to 23½ years of imprisonment.
'One of the transporters remains a fugitive,' a department statement from 2022 said.
'Investigators are also seeking those individuals believed to have hiredthe hit team in Colombia.'
Pecci's murder happened about three months after Marset had been released from detention in Dubai and about three months before the video of him, with possible ties to South Africa, surfaced.
La investigación sobre el asesinato del fiscal paraguayo Marcelo Pecci cometido por el narcotraficante uruguayo Marset en territorio colombiano demuestra que hace mucho el narco dejo de ser un problema bilateral colombo estadounidense y es hoy un problema americano y mundial. https://t.co/YlJ3d4ysvs
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) August 12, 2022
Marset's name has before been referred to concerning what happened to Pecci.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X about Marset.
One of his posts (translated from Spanish) says: 'The investigation into the murder of Paraguayan prosecutor Marcelo Pecci by Uruguayan drug trafficker Marset in Colombia demonstrates that drug trafficking long ago ceased to be a bilateral Colombian-American problem and is now an American and global problem.' DM