In July 2019, two Israeli figures from the underworld sat down with Vanessa Ballar Fallas at a restaurant in Mexico City. At one point during the meeting, Ballar Fallas received a phone call and, a few moments later, two assailants approached the table and shot both men closely. Ballar Fallas then got up calmly, left the restaurant and disappeared – until now.
According to reports in Mexico, Ballar Fallas was arrested on Thursday for allegedly creating the idea of killing the two men. The couple, Alon Azulay and Benjamin Yeshurun Sutchi, allegedly went to Mexico City to collect a $ 14.5 million money laundering debt they had with them. But the black deal was tangled with the brutal cartels in Mexico City, and the men were aware they were in danger before the meeting.
Messages from mobile phones recovered at the scene – a restaurant at the luxurious Plaza Arts Mall – allegedly showed that the victims had agreed to meet in person if it all happened in a crowded public place. Ballar Fallas reserved the table where Azulay and Sutchi were shot and was there to meet them before all hell broke loose in the building. The video with the mobile phone of the incident showed the panicked diners hiding under fire tables.
Ballar Fallas, known by the pseudonym “La Güera”, is believed by investigators to have brought Sutchi and Azulay to the restaurant with the promise of giving them millions of dollars of money laundered. In a statement Friday, the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office described her as a “trusted partner” in the leadership of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which was accused of organizing the assassinations.
newspaper universal reported that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel tried to use the two Israelis to launder millions, but came to believe that the two would not give them their share, so they would have arranged the job with Ballar Fallas and be hired weapons.
At the time of the murders, the shooters were named Esperanza Gutierrez, a 33-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man, Mauricio Hiram. Both are believed to have belonged to the Tláhuac cartel, which is said to be allied with the larger New Generation Jalisco cartel. Gutierrez was arrested moments after the July 2019 coup, while Hiram was not pursued and arrested until September of that year.
The Israeli embassy in Mexico said the two dead had previous criminal records in both Israel and Mexico, and Mexican police said evidence suggested the shooting was linked to a financial dispute between Israeli mafia-linked criminal groups.
“Yesterday’s event leads us to report the facts with a settlement of scores among criminal groups and / or organized crime,” said Ulises Lara López, a spokeswoman for the city’s prosecutor’s office in 2019. “It could be a solution for the Israeli mafia. , which is why a complete identification [of the victims] it was possible, along with their criminal records. ”
In August 2019, Mexico asked Interpol for help in finding Ballar Fallas. On Thursday, a year and eight months after she was presumed to have thought her job was fatally hit, she was finally pursued in Mexico City.