This is the second time that Byron Alcides Berganza Espina, 67, is in the United States prisons, fulfilling a sentence for moving drugs from Guatemala to the north of the continent.
Berganza was imprisoned in 2003 and after five years he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the transfer of drugs to the US. Although on December 18, 2015 he regained his freedom after a collaboration agreement.
Two years after returning to Guatemala, cocaine reassemble again, demonstrated the inquiries.
The accusation explained that Berganza was part of an organizationfrom 2017 to September 2019, dedicated to large -scale drug trafficking, which operated through South America, Central America and North America.
Berganza statement
“You have the right to address the court before the sentence” indicated the Eastern District Court of the United States. UU. To Berganza.
“It is very difficult for me to be in this situation, but I am here to apologize for what I did after leaving prison. With 12 years -in jail -I wanted you to know that I learned a lot from that first time. I didn’t go out with that mentality, ”he said.
Berganza said he reassemble cocaine to help one of his children, who had a debt.
“I left a son, a 9 -year -old boy outside my home, and when I returned, he asked me for help and as a father I supported him to try to find that money, so that they would not kill him for it. He was killed anyway, his honor, but it was not because we didn’t try to save him, ”Berganza said.
He commented that he did not want to translate drugs again, but for his son he was going to do anything.
“At my age, I really didn’t want to do that because my health was bad. I mean, I am suffering from many other health problems. I apologize, your honor, ”he said.
The lawyer Michael Anderson said that Berganza, his client, has tried to cooperate with the US government to reduce the conviction, also said that the defendant has vision problems and was close to being blind.
“It has a very serious health. The court has had the kindness of ordering that
Submit for surgery while being imprisoned and that is the reason you wear these glasses, ”Anderson acknowledged.
Berganza Espina was sentenced to 240 months in prison on August 2, 2023, while his son Byron José Berganza declared himself guilty In 2021 for drug transfer and decided to collaborate with the US authorities to seek a reduction in their sentence.
His first condemnation
Berganza Espina is considered by anti -narcotics such as the second Guatemalan drug trafficker with greater power in the late 90s, captured and sent to US soil, after the former mayor of Zacapa, Arnoldo Vargas Estrad years in prison.
In 2016, the Public Media published that Berganza was Escort de Vargas, but then trafficked on his own. The New York Prosecutor’s Office attributed his power to his brother -in -law was military. “According to document 60 of the file, his sister, Wilda Berganza, was married to General Carlos Pineda Carranza,” he wrote.
National Security Archives records indicate that, between 1995 and 1996, Pineda Carranza was head of the General Staff of the defense.
He added that in 2003 Berganza was first arrested in El Salvador after he met with José Armando Llort Quito, former president of the national mortgage credit in the government of Alfonso Portillo.