Candia. Ambev´s Backus & Johnston middleman in La Pampa
A lady employed as a prostitute in the Amazon´s largest illegal gold mining field brings the name of the main beer supplier to the cluster of clandestine bars and brothels in the area: Candia. A survey in Puerto Maldonado´s prison, and this name appears again. Four times. Who is the viceroy of beer at the Interoceanica Highway? This is the third installment of The Embassy’s Notebooks, Frontera Piratas series of reports on the micro economics of human trafficking in Madre de Dios, in the Peruvian south eastern Amazon.
By, Gabriel Arriarán
Prison is a gold mine for information. Everything that is rumored, is known or commented on in the Hades of criminality can be collected from there, if the visitor closes his mouth and opens his ears, and is empathetic with the human drama that tends to occur in prisons of the Amazonian countryside, in Peru.
In October 2017, Frontera Pirata entered the San Francisco prison in the city of Puerto Maldonado, to apply a little survey among those detained and sentenced for trafficking in persons. The number of inmates without a sentence points to the criminalization of human trafficking proletarians: waiters, cooks, security agents, prostitutes. The police even arrests and imprisons victims.
What happens, though, with those really profiting from this crime? Are they too in jail? One of the questions included in this little survey shed some light on the subject. If 75% of the gross income of clandestine bars and brothels in La Pampa comes from the sale of beer, who is really making money out of sexual exploitation and the trafficking of women and girls. Who these crime entrepreneurs buy their beer from?
In september 2015 Frontera Pirata met one of the ladies that used to work for the Embassy. The encounter resulted in one first clue. A name: Candia. The girl didn’t know anything else.
Out of the 25 inmates managed to survey at the San Francisco prison, 21 didn’t know nor have a clear idea who their bosses were buying beer from. But four mentioned this name again. Candia. “Beer came from Candia´s deposit”. “Candia brought us the beer”, “They brought it from the track” (where is this middleman’s warehouse) were some of the answers.
Who is Candia? First explorer of the Madre de Dios basin, during the years of the Spanish conquest of the Incas, was named like that. They nicknamed him The Greek. The indigenous tribes put him to run. This one, on the other hand, had come to stay.
La Pampa´s Viceroy of Beer
Various sources related to the distribution of groceries in Madre de Dios identified it. Candia is the name of a company: C & C Distribuciones Candia SAC, registered in the Peruvian Internal Revenue Department, with number 20491112400. This crime startup´s address is just a few hundred meters away from the bars and brothers from where hundreds of human trafficking victims have been rescued. Journalist Manuel Calloquispe approached Candia´s warehouse and managed to capture these images.
Mrs Maria Elena Candia is the legal representative of this company. The inmates, however, talked about a man, not a woman. Now, pay attention to this Shacman cargo vehicle with license plate F8L-942 unshipping beer to the aforementioned address. Frontera Pirata looked for the registration of the vehicle. Its owner is Transportes Interoceánico C&M SAC. The legal representative of this company is Mr. Fidel Caviedes, husband to Candia Olave. He is the viceroy of beer in the Pampa. He is Candia.
Manuel Calloquispe managed to convince a bar owner in Puerto Maldonado to call Caviedes and ask him how much would he charge for the beer. In the following conversation, Caviedes confirms that he could provide beer to this improbable new client.
After that, Frontera Pirata pretended to be an employee from a market research company, and called Caviedes again. He himself confirmed that he bought beer directly from Ambev´s Backus & Johnston in Cusco. We suggested that according to our databases, he was selling around fifty thousand boxes of beer (one box equals twelve 620ml bottles) a year. Offended by our suggestion, Caviedes corrected. He said that he was purchasing and selling between 24 and 30 thousand boxes of beer a month in the largest illegal gold mining field in the Amazon, particularly, when the State interrupted the raiding to the miner´s camps.
If a box of beer costs around S/.42, that means between 1 and 1.26 millions of soles ( US1=S/.3.3) per month.
S / .380 earned one of the victims of trafficking in persons at the Embassy’s, less than half of the minimum salary.
S /. 2188 a month was making the better paid prostitute at the Embassy´s.
S / .49 110 gross sold the Embassy’s in the 16 days that appear in the account notebook to which we had access, 75% of which correspond to the sale of beer.
Between S / .1 and 1.26 million is what Backus and Johnston sell per month to C & C Distribuciones Candia.
One million soles is the absolute approximate distance between a trafficking victim and Peru´s main brewing corporation.
A Beer Salesman in the Viceroyalty of Contradictions.
A few months ago, Frontera Pirata spoke with the current mayor of the district municipality of Inambari, Felix Hallasi. The new town of La Pampa is under its jurisdiction. Hallasi confirmed that the ditches in the Interoceanica Highway that clandestine bar and brothers occupy are part of a rigid zone. None of the businesses built on the rights-of-way of this highway has a municipal permit to operate. Therefore, pharmacies, brothels, hardware stores, restaurants, hostels, taxi associations, all of them operate illegally. C & C Distribuciones Candia SAC, the beer supplier of bars and clandestine brothels too.
In addition, an interesting fact appeared. In September 2017, the Peruvian Internal Revenue Service (Sunat) included Distribuciones Candia among the largest tax payers in the state.
How does C & C Distribuciones Candia SAC justify the income tax for the sale of between 24 thousand and 30 thousand monthly cases of beer to criminal enterprises such as The Embassy?
If bars and prostitutes do not have an IRE number bill for the sale of beer, why did Sunat include C & C Distribuciones Candia in the registry of the main tax payers in the Madre de Dios region? The suspicion is that, in addition to the distribution of beer, there are indications of a million dollar invoice traffic.
Why does Backus and Johnston have among their distributors a company domiciled in the national capital of trafficking in persons and the sexual exploitation of women and minors?
Update: 27/02/2019
César González, journalist for Radio Madre de Dios, covered the deployment of Operation Mercury 2019 and sent us these two photos of an old acquaintance of ours, on Monday at 17:14. Both correspond to the location of Distribuciones Candia SAC, Backus and Johnston middleman in La Pampa.
This means two things.
1. Since Frontera Pirata complaint about the laundering of money from human trafficking through beer , neither the specialized prosecutor’s office in Puerto Maldonado nor any competent authority took any action. Frontera Pirata published this story the last 9nth of May of 2018. According to Caviedes´own words, he was making for Backus between S/.1 and 1.26 million (1US$=S/.3.3). As of February 9 of the current year, that is 11.25 million soles, the product of sexual exploitation and human trafficking of who knows how many girls and women. This is 30% more than the complete State allocated budget to fight against trafficking in persons and aiding its victims, nationwide.
2. And Backus?
If you stare at the photographs above, it is imposible not to notice that Candia keeps announcing himself as Ambev´s Backus & Johnson official middleman.
Backus promised Frontera Pirata to cut the sale of beer to this distributor, through this letter sent to us on December 20 of 2018.
We talked with Manuel Silva, official spokesperson for the brewery. This is what he told us:
We have complied with our commitment to suspend the sale to the points involved in this type of crime. And, as we shared with you, and publicly, we continue to thoroughly review our indirect distribution chain in other areas of the country.
The question of rigor is: how then Candia continued selling beer at Km. 108? If Backus is thoroughly reviewing its indirect distribution chain, would not they have all the tools to track down how Candia buys his beer? We also asked Silva this question. At the time of publication of this update, we were still awaiting for his response.
