2023-09-12 19:00:28
The Prosecutor’s Office against Organized Crime of the Public Ministry (MP) has followed up on cases of vehicle fleet rentals in Guatemala City, they are not returned and abandoned, mainly in municipalities in the northern department of Petén.
In this case, the head of the Prosecutor’s Office section, Klayber Bladimiro Sical Jiménez, He explains that the cases have become more important because the people who rent the vehicles remove the GPS system (global positioning system, in Spanish) that they have, and that has created the suspicion that they use the units for other purposes, perhaps criminal.
At first, Sical Jiménez indicates, they as the Prosecutor’s Office against Organized Crime They had not seen this type of cases, because they considered it a misappropriation and it was a matter for other prosecutors’ offices.
“If a person, or people, rent a car and They do not comply with the contract, they do not return the car to the lessor, It is established that it is an improper appropriation and retention,” he explains.
He adds that these complaints had arrived “to municipal, district or metropolitan prosecutors’ offices and they had spread there and the criminal phenomenon that we now see had not been detected with certainty.”
According to the official, they established communication with the landlords and They determined that the phenomenon had escalated into something coming from organized crime.
According to Sical, it was already theft or robbery, and It got worse because those who rent the vehicles remove the global positioning system (GPS, in English).
“This is very important because someone who does not want to return a leased vehicle, removes the GPS, makes us think that it is a new criminal methodology in terms of theft and theft of vehicles,” explains Sical.
According to the official, it is no longer just that he stays with the unitbecause the theft of 15 or 20 vehicles from the same rental company may be considered. That already speaks of a criminal phenomenon.
“We are aware of this phenomenon and we also have a case related to the topic under investigation,” he reveals.
Read also: Authorities investigate the transfer of stolen vehicles between Guatemala and Mexico, through Petén, and the most recent case that occurred in that department
Theory points to criminal acts
For the head of the Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office, the first indications they have are that “they have used these vehicles to move other types of objects, weapons or drugs.” For now, according to Sical, in this case, they have found no indications that they want to market the vehicles either in the country or neighboring countries.
Although yes, says the official, he does not rule out that other criminal groups do negotiate vehicles in Mexico, for example, stolen in the capital of Guatemala.
For now, the case of vehicles rented for use in criminal acts has only been reported in Petén, in the border area with Mexico.
While in San Marcos, Izabal or Huehuetenango, they make a diagram to establish what happens in these places. The National Civil Police believes that the theft of vehicles in these places is more related to passing them to other nations, but they are vehicles sold “on request.”
On June 13, 2023, for example, security forces They recovered a flotilla of picops in Melchor de Mencos, that had been reported stolen by a company dedicated to vehicle rental in Guatemala City.
Robberies in Belize
The National Civil Police (PNC) and the MP carried out an operation and where they located the 2023 model vehicles. According to the authorities, several people arrived at the company’s headquarters in zone 10 of the capital, They rented the vehicles and when the delivery period expired they did not return them.
On January 12, 2023, the PNC captured a man who was accused of stealing vehicles in Belize.
The MP’s Prosecutor’s Office against Transnational Crimes, in coordination with the PNC, detained Rubén Adolfo Barrera Cruz in Melchor de Mencos.
The arrest was made effective “Following the investigation of a complaint made by the Belizean authorities, for the theft of four vehicles.”
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