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Guns, Smugglers, and a Journalist’s Murder on the Paraguay-Brazil Border
For years, weapons importers have flooded Paraguay with more firearms than the country can absorb. Now, seven media outlets, coordinated by Forbidden Stories and OCCRP as part of Alianza Paraguay, are tracing the supply chain feeding organized crime groups in the region—from the countries where the guns are produced, to importers under investigation for weapons smuggling.
- In Paraguay, three weapons importers represented by the same individuals are flooding the country beyond market demand
- One importer, Global Hawk Defense (GHD), is under investigation for weapons smuggling and has been flagged by American authorities for suspected arms trafficking links
- Weapons imported by GHD have been seized from criminal gangs
- Glock firearms imported by GHD were seized in the homes of the men allegedly involved in the killing of journalist Leo Veras in 2020
- Some Glock pistols found in organized criminal networks in Paraguay were exported there via subsidiaries in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, where export controls are less strict
By Mariana Abreu with Magdalena Hervada (Forbidden Stories)
July 8, 2025
Additional reporting by: Sofía Álvarez Jurado, Phineas Rueckert (Forbidden Stories) and OCCRP team
In 2005, then 37-year-old Brazilian journalist Lourenço Veras—known to friends as Leo—arrived in the Paraguayan border city of Pedro Juan Caballero.
By then, local reporter Cándido Figueredo had been covering organized crime for the daily ABC Color for over two decades. His relentless reporting on local kingpins had led to around-the-clock police protection and a heavily fortified home he later described as a prison.
Veras, on the other hand, was “a new face,” recalls Figueredo. “When he showed up, everyone took notice.” Veras had strong connections in Pedro Juan’s Brazilian twin city Ponta Porã, after which he named his blog Porã News, where he wrote about organized crime, policing, and trafficking at the border. Before long, he and Figueredo began working together.
Whenever they met, Veras would ask Figueredo’s wife for coffee. “After drinking it all, just as he was about to leave, he’d say, ‘I’m going to go get coffee somewhere else, because the one you made me wasn’t good.’ Then he’d laugh and carry on,” recalled Figueredo, who worked with him for nine years. That was Veras: “spectacular sarcasm” delivered with a smile. He was also a gifted reporter and photographer who was often first at the crime scene, gathering sources to share with colleagues.
The work was life-threatening in Pedro Juan Caballero, where 7 journalists have been killed since 1991. In a 2017 documentary, Veras reflected on that danger: “We all have to die one day. I just hope it’s not too violent—maybe just one shot, not too much damage.”
On February 12, 2020, Figueredo and Veras discussed plans for their next investigation: they hoped to report on weapons smuggling along the border. But that night, as Veras sat down for dinner, two masked men stormed his home and shot him twelve times. He was found with a blood-stained cloth over his mouth, which, according to the police report obtained by Forbidden Stories, was placed there after the shooting to deliver a message: silence the journalist.
The hitmen were found to be linked to the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), a powerful Brazilian criminal organization that dominates drug and weapons trafficking along the Brazilian border, and has known ties with powerful political figures in neighboring Paraguay. Warned by intelligence sources that he was next, Figueredo packed his essentials and fled with his wife to the United States, where he is now exiled. “We stood outside for five minutes, just looking at our house, and then we walked away,” Figueredo recalls. “Everything we had in this world, we left there.”
Leo Veras (left) – courtesy of the family – and Cándido Figueredo (right).
Now, Forbidden Stories is continuing the reporters’ work, exposing part of the complex small arms supply chain fueling criminal gangs in the region. Our consortium has identified three importers—represented by the same individuals—that are flooding Paraguay with pistols manufactured by Glock, an Austrian firearms company known for its semiautomatic handguns.
(Contacted by the consortium on several occasions, Glock did not respond to requests for comment.)
One importer, Global Hawk Defense (GHD), is under investigation by Paraguay’s prosecutor’s office for weapons smuggling and has been flagged by U.S. authorities after hundreds of its firearms were seized and tied to violent crime across South America. Firearms brought in through this network of companies also turned up in the homes of Veras’ alleged killers.
The Cartridge Trail
While police never recovered the firearm that killed Veras, the shell casings it left behind told a story. When the gun was fired, it imprinted microscopic tool marks on the bullet and casing. These distinctive marks act like a fingerprint unique to the weapon: In this case, it was a 9mm Glock pistol, according to the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji). Further forensic analysis by police revealed the same gun had been used in seven other murders or attempted murders, all linked to the PCC.
The case’s police reports detail other pistols seized from the properties of the alleged hitmen, half of which the consortium identified to be 9mm Glocks. While these pistols were legally registered and not officially linked to prior illegal activity, they were found in the possession of individuals suspected of arms trafficking and organized crime. Their presence points to a broader trend: the growing proliferation of Glock pistols within criminal networks.
All but one of the traced 9mm Glocks had been imported between 2016 and 2019 by a single licensed dealer: Global Hawk Defense, one of the main Glock importers in Paraguay.
GHD presents itself as a “one-stop shop for all Government necessities in the realm of Security and Defense.” Yet there is no public record of any contracts between GHD and the Paraguay government—despite legal requirements for such agreements to be publicly disclosed. Instead, a significant share of its legally imported weapons has been obtained by organized crime groups.
In late 2024, two GHD employees–Alicia López and Jesús Dominguez–were indicted in Paraguay on counts of arms trafficking, after selling dozens of firearms “in an irregular manner,” the indictment files state. (GHD and López’s legal team did not respond to requests for comment.)
Evidence in the case “indicated that they [GHD] were using smaller companies as supposed buyers, and registering the guns in the name of people who had nothing to do with the purchases. The hypothesis is that the weapons were going to PCC and other Brazilian organized crime groups,” a source close to the case told Forbidden Stories. (In a press release from 2024, GHD said it is cooperating with authorities and emphasized that the alleged acts involve individuals outside the company’s board.)
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Seized Across the Border
In February 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice contacted Paraguay’s prosecutor Marcelo Pecci—assassinated later that year while on honeymoon in Colombia. Attached to the message was a report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), highlighting concerns about suspected arms trafficking links involving GHD.
By then, GHD was connected to 477 firearm traces conducted across Central and South America, the document reads. Of those, 430 weapons were recovered in Brazil alone, and all of them, the report specifies, were Glock pistols. (Brazilian criminal gangs often source their weapons from Paraguay, where “looser controls” make it easier to obtain firearms than under Brazil’s stricter regulations, Dr. Andrei Serbin Pont, director of the regional think tank CRIES, said.) This number likely represents a fraction of the weapons in circulation, accounting only for pistols seized by Brazilian authorities with legible serial numbers (criminal groups frequently erase serial numbers to avoid detection). According to Bruno Langeani, a senior consultant at Brazil’s Instituto Sou da Paz, “if we were to include the number of weapons with scraped serial numbers, the total number of cases would probably reach the thousands.”
(The ATF did not respond to Forbidden Stories’ questions.)
Documents from the Brazilian Federal Police, obtained by Forbidden Stories, show a 9mm Glock firearm manufactured in the United States was imported into Paraguay by GHD (importer code GHD-PY), and later had its serial number removed before being seized in Brazil.
These weapons included Glock pistols processed for export through the U.S., but not all Glocks originate there. Trade data from ImportGenius shows that until Paraguay’s 2023 firearms import ban, which granted Paraguay’s Directorate of War Material (Dimabel) the authority to temporarily suspend imports authorizations for firearms, a portion of GHD’s shipments also originated in Europe—specifically in Austria, where Glock’s headquarters are located, and Slovakia, where it has a manufacturing facility.
Untangling Global Hawk’s Web
GHD started importing firearms to Paraguay in 2016. Public records list former Israeli army soldier-turned-businessman Dário Karmel as company representative. But GHD is just one part of his expansive portfolio. He is the director of two other licensed firearms importers: Seguridad Inteligencia y Tecnología Paraguay (SIT Paraguay) and DSR.
SIT Paraguay is named alongside GHD in a 2017 report by Brazil’s Federal Police, obtained by Forbidden Stories. Both firms rank among the top seven Paraguay importers whose weapons were later seized in connection to organized crime in Brazil— indicating “that they possibly made the most voluminous commercializations of trafficked firearms,” the report reads.
Public records show government contracts worth millions of dollars were awarded to SIT Paraguay and DSR between 2010 and 2021. One such contract reveals that the Paraguay Army bought over 3 million dollars worth of Colt shotguns from SIT Paraguay between 2011 and 2014.
Other individuals hold overlapping roles across all three companies. Eran Alon, for example, is listed as director of SIT Paraguay and appears as a founding partner of GHD in the company’s official documents. Sebastián Pekholtz also appears in various leadership positions. Alicia López—currently facing smuggling charges linked to GHD—is also an employee of SIT Paraguay and a trustee of DSR.
This diagram illustrates the intricate web of relationships between individuals and companies within the Global Hawk Defense network (Credit: Forbidden Stories).
“There is clearly a connection between the companies, and [Alicia López] is a person being used—a middleman,” a source close to the case, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, told Forbidden Stories. “Normally, those higher up in the chain of responsibility hardly ever appear in documents. But it is an indicator that she is linked to these companies and that they are ultimately one and the same.”
(GHD, SIT Paraguay, and DSR did not respond to requests for comment. López’s legal team said she had “work overload and a lack of knowledge about Dimabel’s resolutions,” according to ABC Color.)
“A crapload” of guns
Multiple companies importing the same weapons, all tied to the same people, points to a potential mechanism for avoiding scrutiny: by separating operations across different legal entities, these actors may import large volumes of guns without attracting attention to any one company. “It is less conspicuous for the initial seller to sell to two companies rather than one when you’re selling such significant amounts of weapons in a country with only 7 million inhabitants,” the anonymous source told Forbidden Stories.
GHD, SIT Paraguay, and DSR, the top three Glock importers to Paraguay, were responsible for importing at least 29,140 Glock firearms between 2013 and 2023, according to customs data analyzed by Forbidden Stories.
“That’s a crapload,” Dr. Serbin Pont said. “That’s a lot of guns for a small market.” Experts agree that Paraguay’s domestic firearms market is already saturated, and consumer demand does not justify such quantities of firearms.“If you think about the end user, it’s clear they’re not in Paraguay—there are far too many weapons for what the country could realistically import or legally authorize for civilian possession,” added Former Minister of Justice and security advisor Cecilia Perez Rivas.
The Blame Game
Experts say that the sheer volume of firearms imported by these companies should raise alarms for manufacturers. “When you look at the volume of arms exported to Paraguay, it’s much larger than the country’s capacity to absorb them internally,” said Langeani.
As Glock expanded its operations in the U.S. in 2013 through its subsidiary Glock Inc., more pistols began arriving from the U.S.
Documents from the Brazilian Federal Police, obtained by Forbidden Stories, reveal that a 9mm Glock firearm manufactured in the United States was imported into Paraguay by SIT Paraguay (importer code SIT-PY), and later had its serial number removed before being seized in Brazil.
An analysis by Forbidden Stories of 117 Glock firearms seized by authorities in Brazil and Paraguay found that approximately 89 originated in the U.S. An additional ten were Austrian-manufactured Glocks exported to its U.S. subsidiary, Glock Inc. These were exported under Austrian licenses with the condition that they were intended solely for the U.S. domestic market. Another seven were assembled in Slovakia and exported under Slovakian licenses and only three came directly from Austria.
This data shows that while Glock is based in Austria, with strict export regulations, most of these sales were routed through countries with more flexible export licenses, such as the U.S., where the Trump administration has withdrawn from the Arms Trade Treaty and loosened arms trade export controls.
Additionally, most Glock sales to Paraguay appear to have been routed through intermediary branches in Panama and Uruguay.
(Glock did not respond to requests for comment; it did not clarify its current or past commercial relationships with GHD, SIT, and DSR, or explain what oversight it exercises over its subsidiaries’ sales to Paraguay.)
Some Latin American governments have taken action against gun manufacturers they hold responsible for the flow of illegal weapons flooding their territories. In Mexico, where over 70% of firearms used by organized crime have been traced back to just 3% of U.S. manufacturers, the government filed a lawsuit against 6 U.S. companies, including Glock, citing “massive damage” caused by the defendants “actively facilitating the unlawful trafficking of guns to cartels and other criminals.” The case was ultimately dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which stated “Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers.”
“What should a responsible company do? They should monitor and enforce standards within their distribution chain. Everyone selling their products should be held to certain standards to prevent organized crime from gaining access to those weapons,” said Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, former legal adviser to Mexico’s Foreign Ministry. “Today, these companies have no responsibility—they’re under no obligation to ensure their products don’t end up in the hands of criminals.”
The consensus, however, is that blame is shared. “Everyone’s trying to point fingers at the other person, and the truth is, it resides somewhere in the middle for everything,” Henry Ziemer, associate fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Forbidden Stories.
“Most of the illegal diversion doesn’t come from the manufacturer. In my opinion, it comes from subsidiary parts of the chain. Theft from stockpiled weapons that have been taken in, bribery and corruption within law enforcement, military and poor storage and transportation,” said Dr. Rachel Bolton-King, Associate Professor of Forensic Science at Nottingham Trent University.
Cándido Figueredo, working in his home of Pedro Juan Caballero under police protection. Photograph taken by his late friend and colleague Leo Veras.
The consequences for those caught in the crossfire are personal—and sometimes deadly. All the alleged hitmen behind Leo Veras’ assassination, initially taken into custody in 2020, have since been released. His murder, like many journalists before him, remains unpunished. “One has to wonder, right? Whether it was worth it,” said Figueredo. “I spent 25 years completely isolated from society, surrounded by guns, by police. I couldn’t even go to a restaurant,” he said. “Even now, I struggle just walking down the street, flinching at every sound. And in this country, there’s noise everywhere.”
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