Police in Colombia have arrested one of many founders of the dreaded transnational crime gang Tren de Aragua.
Larry Amaury Álvarez Núñez, often known as “Larry Changa”, was captured in a rural space in Quindío province.
Colombia’s ministry of defence mentioned Larry Changa was needed in his native Venezuela in addition to in Chile on prices of terrorism, arms trafficking, extortion and kidnapping.
The Tren de Aragua felony group which he co-founded has unfold lately from Venezuela as far south as Chile and as far north as america.
Larry Changa, 46, is from the Venezuelan state of Aragua, from which his felony gang takes its title.
Underneath his management, the Tren de Aragua grew from a jail gang primarily based at Tocorón jail, the place he and co-founder Héctor Guerrero Flores have been serving time for homicide, into a global crime syndicate.
Changa managed to flee from Tocorón in 2015.
Three years later, he reappeared in Chile, the place, in line with prosecutors, he arrange cash laundering operations for the gang.
Venezuelan creator Ronna Rísquez, who has written a ebook concerning the Tren de Aragua, has described in a BBC News Mundo article [in Spanish] how crime has shot up in Chile because of the growth of the Tren de Aragua.
Ms Rísquez says that the gang took benefit of the stream of tens of millions of migrants from Venezuela to different Latin American nations to develop its empire.
It extorts migrants, is concerned in intercourse trafficking, contract killings and kidnappings.
Larry Changa is believed to have fled Chile in 2022 as Chilean police closed in on him.
Police in Colombia tracked him down within the small city of Circasia, in Colombia’s espresso area.
Officers have thus far not supplied any particulars as to how they managed to find Larry Changa however mentioned that he could be transferred to the Colombian capital, Bogotá.
The ministry of defence mentioned in a tweet that the message for different felony leaders was clear: “We’ll proceed to go after them till we hunt them down in order that they may pay for his or her crimes.”
Among the many Tren de Aragua co-founders nonetheless on the run is Héctor Guerrero Flores, who escaped from Tocorón jail final yr.
Police forces throughout Latin America will likely be hoping that Larry Changa’s arrest could yield clues to Guerrero Flores’s whereabouts.
