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El Ciudadano

Original article: Las alertas estaban arriba: UAF avisó a Valencia sobre red del Tren de Aragua que movió $75 mil millones

Criticism has persisted since the dismantling of the Aragua Train network on June 2, which illegally transferred over $75 billion out of the country. Why did the financial intelligence system fail to act sooner? The uncomfortable answer is that the Financial Analysis Unit (UAF) did issue alerts. Between April 2024 and May 2026, the UAF sent documents on at least four occasions to national prosecutor Ángel Valencia, including Reports of Suspicious Operations (ROS) from multiple banks. This information outlined transactions involving companies and individuals currently on the list of indictments.

The documents submitted to Valencia included two shell companies — Bexdigital Service and BexGroup — identified as the main recipients of funds from the operation led by an individual known as “Yefri,” linked to Carlos Gómez Moreno (“Carlos Bobby”), one of the highest-ranking members of the Aragua Train in Chile, currently imprisoned in Colombia. However, the most explosive finding in the bank reports was the name of José Pérez Asencio, then an executive at Banco Santander and now detained, who was flagged in the alerts. Also mentioned was Joel David Díaz, partner of the external BancoEstado official Rossana Blanco, who has also been arrested.

As revealed by CIPER, the first document from the UAF dates back to April 2024, meaning that two months before the quintuple homicide in Lampa—the shooting on July 15 that year that left five dead—the agency had already informed the Public Ministry about the irregular activities of this structure. Paradoxically, it was that crime that led to the recovery of the iPhone belonging to Bárbara Henríquez, alias “Barby,” identified as one of the primary operational figures of the criminal organization, and unlocked the investigation that ultimately dismantled the network.

Response from the National Prosecutor’s Office

When questioned by the mentioned investigative medium, the UAF declined to comment on the case. The National Prosecutor’s Office responded that the reports are “received and analyzed by specialized units” and subsequently forwarded to the regional prosecutors investigating “the facts or individuals reported in the UAF’s reports.”

However, metropolitan regional prosecutor Héctor Barros, who led the investigation that dismantled the organization, provided a harsher version. In an interview on Radio Duna, Barros acknowledged that he received the reports “recently” and because he had requested them himself.

He stated that the bank alerts existed—Pérez Asencio was reported by Banco BCI “some time ago”—and that the UAF sent them to the Public Ministry, but that “they did not arrive in this particular case at the Southern Regional Prosecutor’s Office.” He concluded: “I don’t know what happened there… it must be in another prosecutor’s office.”

What did those alerts contain that went unheeded in time? The ROS reports originated from at least three banks: Banco Falabella, Banco de Chile, and BCI. They warned of more than $292 million deposited into José Pérez Asencio’s account between December 2023 and January 2025, amounts inconsistent with his financial capacity as an executive.

According to CIPER, another alert indicated that Marcos Reyes Acosta, a member of BexGroup, received transfers totaling around $761 million in just six months (from October 2024 to March 2025), averaging $128 million per month.

Most of these funds ended up in Bexdigital Service, through which a total of $58.501 million was siphoned out of the country. It was also detected that Joel David Díaz received a cash deposit of $19 million in March 2025, and that Jessica Yurimar Hernández Carrero, a “straw person” without formal employment, accumulated transfers exceeding $56 million from February 2022 to October 2025.

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