Pilot of plane that crashed in Coahuila, involved in money laundering and transfer of drugs

Sol Prendido Borderland Beat Milenio

Captain Juan Jose Aguilar Talavera, a military training pilot who commanded the plane that landed on Sunday in Coahuila with 12 other people on board, had a notorious record worthy of a detective novel. 

In 2006 he was arrested for allegedly being part of a narcopilot cell at the service of the Sinaloa cartel, which was accused of having introduced Colombian drug traffickers into the country, while in 2011 he piloted the plane in which he tried to bring the dictator's son Libyan Muammar Gaddafi to Mexico. 

Among other crimes, Aguilar Talavera and 10 others were indicted in 2006 for allegedly participating in logistics for the introduction of a shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine in a DC-9 aircraft seized in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, in April of that same year. year, unlawful for which the Venezuelan Miguel Vicente Vázquez was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

The case uncovered a network of aerial transfers of cocaine from Africa and South America to Mexico and was one of the highlights in the administration of Vicente Fox, but even when he was informed at the time that he would be investigated by the case, the legal destination of Aguilar Talavera and if he received any sentence for that process, there are no public records. 

What is known is that only five years after the Ciudad del Carmen affair, he was flying again: in 2011 he piloted the Hawker 800, which, in an almost film worthy operation, had the mission of extracting Saadi Gaddafi from Libya to move him to Mexico, where he would hide in a villa in Nayarit. 

When he learned the real reason for the trip (organized by two Canadian businessmen), Aguilar Talavera refused to fly from Kosovo to the Libyan desert, according to testimonies collected by the then Deputy Attorney General for Specialized Investigation in Organized Crime, before which he had to appear. Since the operation was never carried out, he did not face charges. 

The background of Captain Juanito, as he was known in the world of pilots, is not the only irregular element that comes to light after the accident. 

The airline to which the crashed airplane belongs - TVPX Aircraft Solutions - does not exist in concrete terms, although it does exist legally. It is a shell company legally constituted in Utah that provides services to foreigners so that they can anonymously own an aircraft in the United States, where the law does not allow citizens of other countries to offer air transportation services. Sources consulted by MILENIO confirmed that the owners of the aircraft are from the State of Mexico, but are shielded under confidentiality contracts signed with the US consortium. 

As for the allegedly criminal activities of Aguilar Talavera, he and his brother, Miguel, were taken to be detained by elements of the Federal Police at the Tijuana airport on April 17, 2006, accused of transferring undocumented immigrants, Money laundering and drug transfer. The notes of the time narrate that they were stopped after landing in a private aircraft in which five Colombian citizens were traveling, one of them wanted by the DEA. 

The key lay in his passenger manifesto. Among the people that the Aguilar Talavera brothers were transferring that day was Diana Lorena Toro Díaz, credited by the US Treasury Department as the financial operator of the Sinaloa cartel and the network headed by Alejandro Flores Cacho, owner of several airlines used to transfer drugs, such as LuzAair SA de CV. She, the Aguilar Talavera brothers and the rest of the Colombians received a formal prison order for this and the case of Ciudad del Carmen three months later. 

"A federal judge decreed the formal imprisonment of 11 people - including five Colombians - who are allegedly part of a cell of the Sinaloa cartel, and which are related to the shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine seized last April in the Ciudad del Carmen airport, Campeche, "newspaper El Universal reported on July 27, 2006.