Bolivia hands over alleged cartel leader Sebastián Marset after arrest operation

# Bolivia hands over alleged cartel leader Sebastián Marset after arrest operation

Bolivian authorities arrested suspected Uruguayan drug trafficker Sebastián Marset in Santa Cruz and handed him over to US authorities on the event date, according to AFP reporting carried by France 24.

The transfer is a major development in a long search for one of South America’s most notorious narco figures. AFP said Marset, who had been on the US most-wanted list, was passed to Drug Enforcement Administration agents at Santa Cruz airport and then placed on a US aircraft. That means the arrest was not the end of the operation; it was the start of immediate extradition-style removal from Bolivia.

The police operation was large. AFP said hundreds of officers were mobilised and that Marset was arrested in an upscale neighbourhood of Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s economic capital. Four other people were also arrested. The scale matters because it suggests the operation was designed to prevent escape and capture possible accomplices at the same time.

Marset’s profile is unusual even by organised-crime standards. The report described him as a “notorious Latin American narco trafficker” and said he had a $2 million US bounty on his head for alleged money laundering. It also said he used football clubs in multiple countries to launder proceeds and even placed himself in starting lineups, a detail that shows how brazen his public life had become.

AFP said he had been imprisoned in Uruguay from 2013 to 2018 for drug trafficking and later moved around South America, including stints in Bolivia and Paraguay. Both countries had warrants out for his arrest. The report also said the United States had previously tied him to a major cocaine-trafficking investigation in Paraguay and alleged that he led a network that imported more than 16 tons of cocaine into Europe.

That background helps explain why Bolivia’s action drew immediate attention from Washington. The US State Department’s narcotics bureau publicly welcomed the arrest, treating it as evidence of a broader regional anti-cartel effort. Bolivia’s president also thanked international organisations and neighbouring countries for help in the operation.

The arrest comes as countries across the continent try to show they are responding more aggressively to organised crime. AFP said Bolivia and 16 other countries had joined an anti-cartel military alliance launched by President Donald Trump just days earlier. Whether that alliance will have lasting impact is unclear, but the Marset case offers an early sign that cross-border law-enforcement cooperation can still produce results.

For Bolivia, the arrest also carries domestic significance. If local police officers did collaborate with Marset, as a senior police official suggested might be the case, the affair could expose corruption well beyond one man’s criminal network. That would turn the case from a capture story into a wider institutional probe.

For now, the central fact is straightforward: Marset was caught in Bolivia and handed to US authorities within hours. For a fugitive who spent years eluding police across the region, that is a dramatic turn.