Asunción, September 17 (teleSUR-RHC)-- A shipment of over 650 kilograms of marijuana was found Tuesday hidden in cigarette boxes of a company belonging to President Horacio Cartes, the independent daily Ultima Hora reported.       

According to Attorney General Christian Roig, the border residence Curuguaty where the seizure of Tabacalera del Este cigarette boxes took place was monitored by anti-drug agents for the past three months.

“We have already identified the person allegedly owning the business... This is a criminal organization that works in Canindeyu, all along the border. They are using boxes of cigarettes under the name of the president’s (company),” he said, arguing that the subterfuge allowed them to go through checkpoints without major controls.     

The information comes as awareness has significantly grown in Paraguay about the extent to which narcopolitics has permeated the country, especially since various lawmakers, most belonging to the governing party, were found to have ties to drug-trafficking.       
    
The current president and head of a business conglomerate has not been excluded of suspicions himself.  

In the mid-1980s, he even served a sentence in prison over contraband and money laundering charges. More recently, in 2007 a U.S. diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks referred to him as a “so-called pillar of the (money-laundering) community.”

The cable cited the then head of anti-money laundering office Hugo Ibarra, saying that Cartes' bank was responsible for 80 percent of the money laundering in the country.      

In 2010, another cable portrayed Cartes as the chief of a transnational criminal organization, and the main focus of a U.S. investigation called Heart of Stone, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration.