Uruguayan drug trafficker shot dead in Palermo: hitmen killed Migales Viera in front of his wife
Carlos Andrés Migales Viera (31), with an extensive criminal record in Uruguay, was shot by hitmen in an apartment in Palermo, Buenos Aires. Two people have been detained.
Hitmen kill Uruguayan drug trafficker in Palermo in front of his wife; two detained
A Uruguayan man with an extensive criminal history was shot dead in the early hours of Sunday in an apartment on Costa Rica street at number 5200, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo, according to losprimeros.tv. Carlos Andrés Migales Viera, 31 years old, had recently arrived from Uruguay with his wife, María Mercedes, 27, who was unharmed.
All indications are that Migales Viera opened the door to the hitmen who then executed him. The investigation was taken up by the National Court of Criminal and Correctional Matters No. 26, and two people have been detained in connection with the case.
Profile of the victim: robbery, drugs and homicide from age 15
Migales Viera's criminal record in Uruguay began in June 2009, when he was just 15 years old. Since then he accumulated charges for armed robbery, escaping from a police station, disorderly conduct, drug seizures and, from 2016 onwards, a series of arrests centred on the sale of narcotics. In 2024 he was arrested for aggravated homicide. His record also includes firearm discharges, assault and offences against property, all in Montevideo.
"Uruguayan police detained him a thousand times: for theft, for selling drugs. They consider him a minor drug trafficker, but one who in recent times was getting bigger," a source from the investigation told Clarín. His record involved the National Anti-Drug Brigade, the Investigations Division and Uruguay's Highway Police.
The hitmen, from southern Greater Buenos Aires
The actual perpetrators of the crime are, according to the investigation, from the south of Greater Buenos Aires. After the attack they attempted to dispose of a weapon—allegedly equipped with a silencer—at the corner of avenida Santa Fe and Intendente Bullrich, in the Puente Pacífico neighbourhood, about ten blocks from the crime scene.
Investigators do not directly link Migales Viera's homicide to a spate of crimes between Uruguayan drug traffickers that dominated the news in 2024, because those episodes involved protagonists of higher rank within the drug trafficking world.
Precedent 1: the false Amoros Sanguinetti in Pilar
On 25 September 2024, after 10 pm, residents of Las Camelias street at number 2300 in Pilar reported gunshots. Police found a man who identified himself with a Uruguayan passport in the name of Joaquín Andrés Amoros Sanguinetti, 27 years old. He had arrived in a BMW M235i. According to security cameras, a black Jeep Renegade appeared at the moment when he stopped the vehicle; when the man began to run, he was shot 17 times. It was later established that the identity was false: the individual was impersonating another drug trafficker imprisoned in Uruguay.
Precedent 2: ten shots at close range in Derqui
On Saturday, 12 October 2024, Uruguayan Marcelo González Algerini, 36 years old, stopped at a small shop in the Monterrey neighbourhood of Derqui with Teófilo Américo Sturm González, 80. When Sturm got out of the vehicle, a black Jeep Renegade with similar characteristics to the one from the previous episode suddenly appeared and its occupant—identified as the same man with false identity—shot González Algerini ten times at close range; four gunshots proved fatal.
A robbery of the victim's house immediately followed: Fabián Sturm Jardón took three blocks of cocaine. A subsequent search of the premises resulted in the seizure of a hydraulic press, an electronic scale, remains of cocaine and 694,011 dollars—a figure that police questioned as a possible typing error.
Prosecutor Marcela Semeria took charge of the investigation. González Algerini's girlfriend declared that her partner and Sturm Jardón had participated in the September attack, and that Sturm González and her boyfriend were partners. With this evidence, the prosecutor detained Teófilo Sturm González for "aggravated homicide by the participation of two or more persons, illegal possession of a firearm and cocaine trafficking"; given his advanced age he was granted house arrest and was later dismissed. His son Fabián remained at large along with the man with false identity, who in 2025 was detained in Brazil and extradited to Argentina.
The Narco-Criminality Prosecutor's Office (Procunar) intervened after establishing that González Algerini was being sought by the Federal Court of Lomas de Zamora, accused of being part of a dismantled gang in a major operation in which 783 kilograms of cocaine were seized at a cabin complex in Caviahue, in western Neuquén, with an estimated value of 15 million dollars.
Precedent 3: Sturm Jardón, ambushed in Recoleta
Fabián Sturm Jardón—implicated in the previous attacks and with an arrest warrant for homicide—had expressed fear of being murdered. For this reason, according to his own partner, he had moved from Del Viso to Buenos Aires City, specifically to Recoleta, trying to go unnoticed.
He was unsuccessful. He was ambushed while getting out of a Renault Logan: an assassin wearing a wig and carrying a weapon with a silencer-type device emerged from a parked Volkswagen Suran and shot him in the back. After the attack, the killer took the victim's fanny pack and walked away. Everything was recorded on camera.
Migales Viera's death—with hitmen, a silenced weapon and a modus operandi identical to the previous cases—adds a new chapter to a series of homicides with mafia characteristics involving Uruguayan citizens on Argentine territory, although investigators have yet to establish a direct connection between all the episodes.
Source: Google News UY — Crime