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How a Prominent Politician and Businessman’s Fall Exposed Corruption in Paraguay
Eulalio “Lalo” Gomes Batista, a Paraguayan congressman and businessman, was killed in a 2024 police raid at his home. Internal documents obtained by Forbidden Stories and its partners reveal that authorities had been warned about his alleged ties to drug trafficking—including direct money transfers from and to companies linked to drug lords—as early as 2017, years before any formal investigation began.
- BBVA global financial group flagged Gomes and his son in 2017 for money transfers from and to a company later linked to convicted drug lord Luiz Carlos da Rocha (“Cabeça Branca”).
- Despite claiming the Gomes investigation by the Public Ministry began in 2023, internal documents show Paraguayan prosecutors requested information from Brazil about Gomes and his son as early as May 9, 2022.
- Claudia Cuevas Sierich, Gomes’s alleged “financial strategist,” was sentenced to five years for a multimillion local-currency scam tied to narco-linked firms—only after Gomes’s death and despite the Paraguayan branch of BBVA flagging her in 2017.
By Sofía Álvarez Jurado (Forbidden Stories)
July 8, 2024
Additional reporting by: Phineas Rueckert (Forbidden Stories), OCCRP, Revista Piauí
One early morning in August, 2024, sitting congressman Eulalio “Lalo” Gomes Batista was home with his wife in Pedro Juan Caballero, in northeastern Paraguay, on the border with Brazil, when he was killed in a police raid.
The operation targeted front men and associates of one of South America’s most dangerous drug traffickers, Jarvis Chimenes Pavão, in a money laundering and drug trafficking scheme. Gomes, a 67-year-old politician and businessman, and his son, Alexandre Rodrigues Gomes, had been formally charged with money laundering and criminal association reportedly just moments earlier—despite photographs of Rodrigues with known money launderers and drug traffickers having surfaced as early as 2019, as reported by Última Hora. His family lawyer says police “executed” Gomes with at least two shots from a short distance; authorities claim he opened fire first and was killed in the exchange.
Months later, the forensic autopsy of his phone uncovered an alleged scheme of judicial manipulation and a political cover-up involving lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges—published by national outlets ABC Color and Última Hora. Yet despite evidence that many of them turned to Gomes for favors, some apparently outside the law, the Paraguayan Prosecutor’s Office made no progress in the investigation they launched.
Gomes had long been a controversial figure, previously linked to high-profile drug traffickers operating in the region, according to the Brazilian press. But the messages recovered from his phone suggest his influence extended to the three branches of government, as well as the military.
In a series of messages published by ABC Color [all the messages and quotes have been translated from Spanish for this article], one text from 2021 revealed how, when already campaigning for Paraguay’s April 2023 general elections, a military spokesperson for the Joint Task Force (FTC) coordinated with him to stage an interview with Brazil’s Record TV. The officer described the outlet as “right-wing, aligned with Bolsonaro,” and coached Gomes on what to say. Another message reveals that in August 2023, when Gomes was already a sitting congressman, he was contacted by prosecutor Katia Uemura, whose husband had been arrested for alleged money laundering. Between August and December, Uemura asked Gomes for help, and he appeared to act as a middleman for someone requesting money to “clean up” her image. In December, she wrote “Don Lalo, not even drug lords have that kind of money.”
Yet, according to a declaration by Paraguay’s Attorney General, Emiliano Rolón Fernández, the Public Ministry delayed opening a formal investigation until 2023, revealing a troubling pattern of inaction against organized crime and corruption. (The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Paraguay did not respond to our specific questions. They provided a general statement, in Spanish, arguing that “they [lacked] the authority to request sensitive data concerning ongoing criminal cases.”)
Asked to comment on these messages, Gomes’s family lawyer, Óscar Tuma, told Forbidden Stories that denying the authenticity of the exchanges made no sense, but added that “If the request was fair, why question the deputy’s attempt to help?”
A Power Broker’s Sudden Ending
The public images of Gomes project success and influence: posing on one of his many cattle farms, in his company “Salto Diamante” branded clothing, or beside Paraguayan former president Horacio Cartes and current one, Santiago Peña, or wearing his trademark gaucho hat. But Gomes’s beginnings were more modest.
The late Eulalio “Lalo” Gomes Batista posing in front of his cattle, while wearing the clothes of his company Salto Diamante, (left, up), posing with Former President Horacio Cartes (left, down) and hugging President Santiago Peña (right). (Credit: Courtesy of ABC Color).
As described by ABC Color, he was born in 1956 in Ponta Porã, the Brazilian city bordering Pedro Juan Caballero, Paraguay. Última Hora added that Gomes grew up “selling ice cream from age 7,” according to sources close to him, during Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1954 to 1989. Over the following decades, particularly while serving as president of the Amambay Region’s Rural Association of Paraguay, from around 2014 to 2023, he climbed the social and political ladder to become a respected businessman and politician.
Members of his family held key positions in some of Paraguay’s most influential government offices: his sister held a post in the Prosecutor’s Office anti-narcotics unit; his cousin was the Director General of the National Anti-Drug Secretariat (SENAD); and his niece worked both in the Public Ministry and as a congressional commissioner.
For years, he built his reputation in livestock in the country’s northeastern Amambay region. Many of his activities centered on the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, long regarded as a hub for organized crime and the drug trade.
It was here that, in 2020, masked men shot and killed Léo Veras—the owner and manager of Porã News, a news site covering organized crime—while he was home having dinner with his family. Gomes allegedly worked with a judge, according to leaked chats obtained by ABC Color, to secure the release of Waldemar Pereira Rivas, Veras’s suspected killer. In a message sent in September 2021, Judge Carmen Silva texted Gomes that she didn’t want Pereira to go to trial in Asunción, where Prosecutor Marcelo Pecci “would want to give him 20 years.” She added: “If you tell me not to bring him [to a specific penitentiary], I won’t. You’re the one in charge.” Pecci—one of Paraguay’s most prominent anti-mafia prosecutors—was later murdered by hitmen while on his honeymoon in Colombia in May 2022.
During these years, and before he officially entered national politics, Gomes stood tall as a powerful figure. According to Piauí magazine, in 2019, when a National Police Chief led a raid against drug trafficker Antonio Joaquim da Mota, Gomes “asked” for him to be removed. “Nobody messes with us,” Gomes wrote in a text message to da Mota at the time. Less than a month later, both the chief and the deputy head of investigations were allegedly replaced.
In early 2024, Forbidden Stories went on the ground in Pedro Juan Caballero, Gomes’s stronghold, and began speaking with local journalists. “There’s talk that his fortune doesn’t come from cattle ranching, but from drug trafficking,” one said.
To trace the origins of that claim, our consortium investigated Gomes’s alleged ties to organized crime. But amid our reporting, on August 19, he was killed by Paraguayan police.
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Just moments before the raid on Gomes’s home, Paraguay’s Public Ministry issued an indictment—accessed by Forbidden Stories and its partners—naming both Gomes and his son as defendants in a case involving “Money Laundering from the Proceeds of International Trafficking of Dangerous Drugs,” tied to Brazilian drug lord Jarvis Chimenes Pavão.
The raid was authorized by Judge Osmar Legal, who has worked in the justice system since 2008, served as a prosecutor in Economic Crimes from 2017 to 2023, and now sits as a judge on Asunción’s Specialized Organized Crime Court. At the time, Gomes had parliamentary immunity, as the constitution establishes that no senator or deputy can be detained from the day of their election until the end of their term. The raid also targeted his son, who now faces charges of international drug trafficking and money laundering. “The team that carried out the raid was an elite unit, the best at what they do,” Legal told Forbidden Stories.
From this point on, accounts of what happened during the raid diverge. And even who exactly participated remains unclear. In August 2024, SENAD Minister Jalil Rachid said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had taken part in the operation through Paraguay’s Special Intelligence Unit for Narcotics and Punishable Offences (SIU)—months later, according to national outlet La Política Online, lawyer Tuma would accuse the DEA of influencing the dismissal of the case into Gomes’s killing—and a senator from the ruling Colorado Party said live on ABC TV that no Brazilian forces were involved in the raid. Yet in June 2025, according to Última Hora, Interior Minister Enrique Riera cited growing PCC influence across state institutions as the reason for Brazilian Federal Police collaboration in the “Lalo Gomes case.” Just hours later, Tuma pushed back again on his X (formerly Twitter) profile, presenting what he said were recent official Brazilian documents showing neither Eulalio Gomes nor his son, Alexandre Rodrigues Gomes, had a criminal record in Brazil.
Officials claim shots were fired from inside a bedroom, prompting an agent to return fire—five shots in total. Lawyer Tuma insists Gomes never fired a weapon but was “executed” by police instead. “Even if we were to hypothetically conclude that the congressman fired those two shots, that still would not justify his being killed,” he told Forbidden Stories.
Gomes died from his wounds, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions.
Rodrigues, the son of Gomes, fled during the raid but surrendered to authorities the following day. According to Tuma, at first he thought that [the raid at his place] was an attempted kidnapping, which triggered an exchange of gunfire. And when Rodrigues arrived at the police station “to seek refuge,” the officers on duty asked him to leave, “fearing that the alleged kidnappers might enter the building as well.” The lawyer described the overall scene as “a tragicomedy.”
Judge Osmar Legal (right) in a videoconference with Alexandre Rodrigues Gomes (in the screen). (Credit: Courtesy of Osmar Legal).
However, on December 4, 2024, an indictment issued by the Public Ministry and accessed by our consortium described Rodrigues as an alleged member of a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking, including possession, transport, and distribution of narcotics, at least between November 2019 and August 2020.
For Years, The Prosecutor’s Office Knew
After Gomes’s death, Paraguay’s Attorney General, Emiliano Rolón Fernández, said the Public Ministry had been investigating Gomes since 2023. But internal records say otherwise.At least three prior warnings about Gomes’s suspected involvement in illicit activities had been issued—by Emilio Pistilli Farilla, owner of a small business, and also a bank in 2017; by the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) and the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money or Asset Laundering (SEPRELAD) in 2021; and, finally, by the Attorney General’s Office itself in 2022.
On October 23, 2017, Pistilli, along with two other people, filed a legal complaint arguing “various offenses that involve and harm [their] persons and property,” and urged “the Public Prosecutor’s Office to order the opening of an appropriate investigation.” In the complaint, they accused Claudia Andrea Cuevas Sierich, “who identified herself as the manager of the BBVA branch in Pedro Juan Caballero and also served as [their] account officer,” of supporting fraudulent credit operations and other alleged financial crimes.
Less than two weeks earlier, on October 10, 2017, the Paraguayan branch of BBVA—one of the largest banks in Spain and Latin America—produced an internal audit where it flagged direct money transfers between Gomes, his son, and Country P.J.C. Business S.A., a company allegedly tied to Luiz Carlos da Rocha, known as “Cabeça Branca” and dubbed the “Pablo Escobar of Brazil. All of this activity was facilitated through Cuevas. That same year, according to ABC Color, the Brazilian Federal Police informed the Paraguayan Public Ministry that Gomes was listed as one of the key figures who grew the most from the criminal enterprises of Cabeça Branca.”
The BBVA report revealed that Cuevas committed “serious irregularities” when approving client loans, among them, one to Country P.J.C. Business S.A., which ended in money transfers from and to Gomes and his son. Described by ABC Color as Gomes’s “financial mastermind,” Cuevas allegedly played a key role in managing and concealing his assets.
(Forbidden Stories asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Paraguay when it first gained access to this audit report. They did not respond to our specific questions.)
A year went by, and on January 10, 2019, Alberto Andrada Argaña, then Legal Director of BBVA Paraguay S.A. (from between June 2015 and October 2023, according to his Linkedin profile) in his capacity as the bank’s legal proxy, filed a criminal complaint alleging fraud, breach of trust, and the fabrication of unauthentic documents — once again targeting Claudia Cuevas.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office issued the indictment against Cuevas on July 17, 2019, six months later.
Asked about Gomes’s alleged relationship with Cuevas, lawyer Tuma said that the bank employee “in her role, provided services related to obtaining loans” and that “as such, those who took advantage of this opportunity—particularly when it suited them—cannot be held responsible.”
However, newly conversations between Cuevas and Gomes surfaced by ABC Color suggest that he may have actively interfered with efforts to hold Cuevas accountable. In these exchanges, Gomes hints that he is in contact with the Prosecutor’s Office about “her case.” Cuevas did not receive a conviction until late 2024, after Gomes’s death.
Forbidden Stories and its partners also accessed a report produced in 2021 by the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money Laundering about Gomes and his son. A total of the equivalent of roughly $4 million USD passed through Gomes’s accounts between 2017 and 2020, raising alarms among the country’s financial authorities.
Finally, in 2022, just one day before the assassination of anti-drug prosecutor Marcelo Pecci, the Paraguayan Public Ministry filed a judicial cooperation request with Brazil for information on suspects linked to major drug-trafficking networks. The request explicitly named Gomes and his son.
Yet no judicial investigation was officially opened, according to Paraguay’s Attorney General, until 2023. (The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Paraguay did not respond to our specific questions.)
Satellite imagery of several properties investigated by Paraguayan police in 2025, belonging to Gomes, his family, or alleged front men, in the vicinity of Pedro Juan Caballero, Amambay. (Credit: Google Earth).
“When ‘Lalo’ took office, I said, in a very difficult interview, that the PCC had entered Parliament,” Juan Martens, executive director of the Institute for Comparative Studies in Criminal and Social Sciences of Paraguay, told Forbidden Stories.
When asked why no formal investigation into Gomes began until 2023, Judge Osmar Legal said: “I don’t want to single anyone out because corruption is a global problem, but to me, the leaked chats say it all. He [Gomes] knew how to protect himself.” Beyond the potential collusion of certain sectors of the police, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the judiciary, Legal, who now has to walk around with bodyguards and an armored vehicle because of his work, also noted that some might have acted to protect their own safety. “Many times, people preferred to stay out of it. And those who preferred a bribe, well, they took it, obviously.”
* In January 2021, BBVA Group sold its entire stake in BBVA Paraguay to Banco GNB Paraguay, part of the Gilinski Group, following regulatory approval. Events in this article may refer to actions taken prior to that sale.
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