Santo Domingo. – Just minutes prior to his arrest Quirino Paulino was calm, the initial delay had already been solved and didn’t have any reason to think that the transfer of the 1,387 kilos of cocaine would fail.

“E Cuñao” (brother-in-law, Ernesto Welcome Guevara Diaz or Maconi) personally prepared the load and an uniformed colonel was in the vehicle protecting the merchandise. Once again, he thought, he would successful crown the drug trafficking operation.

He didn’t know that the antinarcotics authorities had staged an operation which included 44 taped conversations through telephone 809-907-8194, 22 of which were with “El Cuñao.”

The December, 18, 2004, recordings, since the early morning hours, reveal how Paulino personally supervised Guevara’s preparation.

Until 1:47 p.m. he thought that everything went as planned, but he then received a stressed call from Guevara, who was coming behind the truck with the load. “I’am going to turn back, because I see the wheel (the truck) going back, then I’am calling the man and he doesn’t answer the telephone.”

Paulino is surprised by the information and asks how is it possible. The man on the line asks to wait a second for him to verify. He tells him that the truck is the same, but the occupants were different.

The colonel’s fall

What had happened is that Maconi had been delayed to change vehicles and for that reason didn’t see when the Drugs Control agents intercepted the cocaine and arrested their occupants.

By the time Guevara arrives at the entrance of the bedroom community Los Alcarrizos, the DNCD agents are returning to the city with the seized drug. Colonel Lidio Nin Terrero nor his driver Tirso Cuevas Nin are no longer its occupants.

And that’s the reason he doesn’t see them.

Paulino asks him if the drug were being escorted by “the same man as the other days,” and Guevara reiterates that it was the same and with the same driver as in previous occasions.

That information served to collapse Nin Terrero’s later claim that he was in the truck because he had been given “a lift.”

Following instructions, Guevara decides to speed up to see if the truck was further ahead and then observed that the one he previously saw was another. He crosses the toll plaza and nothing.

Then another call to Paulino by an unidentified man whom speaks in code, but the reference is clear that a contact within the DNCD would investigate what had occurred.

Further ahead he lets him know that “friend” had left “towards there” because in fact there was something strange going on.

“There’s something strange”

At 2:02 p.m. Paulino again talks to Guevara, the anguish increases when he tells him that the truck’s occupants’ phones don’t answer any more. “Cuñao there’s something strange there.”

Paulino responds: “what a god-damned c---!”

He again tells Guevara what transpired at Los Alcarrizos. “It was them who were turning back.”

They end that conversation. Ten minutes later again talks to Guevara, who’s now much more distressed. “Something strange is happening, I don’t know if it was that they were waiting for them.”

Then Paulino starts to think about other concerns.

He asks Guevara if the vehicle was his. When the answer is yes, he asks him if it was under his name. Guevara tells him no and that there are no documents in its interior to link him to it.

It’s then when Paulino decides to reveal his greatest concern at that moment, and that was that a vehicle had been following him. “It comes behind me. It’s behind me right now real close to me.”

The person beside him reacts by insisting that “something strange was happening.”

Paulino tells him that there were two vehicles following him since he left his house, where had gone to after dispatching Guevara.

Invoking God

There the prey entrusts God. “Let it be God the one who knows” and ends the conversation. Four minutes later his partner calls, asking him about the vehicles that follow him. “They are coming behind me. They turned there behind me and even a motorcycle is coming behind me.”

 When he tells him he’ll call later and that he would break the cell phone’s chip, the call is suddenly interrupted.

Paulino is arrested marking the beginning of the end of one of the biggest narcotics rings ever captured in the country.

Under oath

In one of the extradition hearings in the Supreme Court, Guevara claimed that he didn’t know Paulino, but the results of a judge’s warrant issued December 13, 2004, to tap Paulino’s phone debunked the affirmation.

SOURCE: eldia.com.do