2023-08-27 21:00:00
Darío Sebastian Codina Bandes, 27 years old, disappeared on January 17 in Guaymallén, Mendoza province. The last location of her whereabouts is, at noon, in the Used Fair from Rodeo de la Cruz, where he lived and worked for six months.
In the case there is only one certainty: Darío He was last seen alive on the fairgrounds and it was there that his trail was lost. But, so far, more than seven months without news from him, there is no specific line of investigation.
Lawyers representing your family, Renzo Valente and Paula Bazan, they consider it possible that behind his disappearance there is a reckoning or a money problem, but they clarify that there are elements that are missing. This possibility is not ruled out by the prosecutor’s office in charge of the investigation: although the case is classified as a whereabouts investigation, the hypothesis is being handled that could have been a victim of some kind of crime and they argue so because of a context of criminal acts that surrounded it.
Hours before his disappearance, on the night of Monday, January 16, Darío met with friends in Unimev Square, in the neighborhood where he lived with his mother until August 2022 before moving. They had agreed to meet again the next day to go to a swimming pool.
That morning, around 1:00 a.m., she told a friend that she had already arrived at the Used Fair. On Tuesday the 17th at 12 noon, Dario sent a message but when they answered him – at 12:40 – he never received it.
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Darío Codina had been working since August 2022 on the property located on Calle Agustín Alvarez at 421 Rodeo de la Cruz, a town in Guaymallén located about 13 kilometers from the Mendoza capital. The owners of the place rent the premises to the merchants by the day, and the fair opens on Sundays, when a crowd usually gathers. Darío disappeared on a Tuesday: during the week, the crowd is less and only those who live and work on the property pass through the property.
Renzo Valentelawyer for the complaint, says in dialogue with PROFILE that it is proven that the young man disappeared from that property. “The probative measure that was requested was a geolocation and the last signal we have from his phone is in that place, he disappears from there. There are no doubts about that. The rest are deductions that we can make, but nothing concrete,” he says.
Inés BandesDario’s mother, finds out about the disappearance days later because a friend of his contacts her sister and tells her, with concern, that she has not been able to locate him for days.
He says that Sebastián –his middle name and as many of his friends called him– had different activities at the Used Fair: he collected tickets in the parking lot, did caretaker jobs, painting jobs in apartments in a nearby neighborhood linked to the property and once a week the purchases for a business that works there.
“Days passed and no one was aware of anything or saw anything,” says his mother in communication with this medium. He questions that neither his employer nor the person with whom he had shared a precarious room on the property since October 2022 – whom he saw daily – had heard from him, and that even that young man told him that he did not see him at night because he slept in another part.
Bandes made the complaint and the Fiscal Office No. 18 and section 44 of Guaymallén intervened in the case. The police carried out a search of the place, but the raid with drones, a dog and the team of the Homicide Division takes place three months later, on April 4.
When Inés Bandes entered the room where her son lived, she found – except for his cell phone – all his things. Among them his fanny pack, which is why she knew it was impossible that she had left by her own decision: “Inside was the documentation of him and his bronchodilator ‘paf’ because he is asthmatic. I said it cannot be . He never went out without it, he even went shopping and took it with him because at any moment he was short of breath. That’s when I thought something had happened to him in there.”
There, he says, with His lawyers were able to verify the “deplorable” conditions in which the young man lived, like other people on the same property. “I was present at the raid and the conditions were not given for that place to be authorized by the municipality,” says the lawyer, who also points to “certain coordination and police and political protection” in the operation of the establishment.
Since then, Inés Bandes says that she began to receive calls and messages with all kinds of information: people telling her that drugs and used weapons were being sold in the place, and also that other criminal acts were taking place. Last March, following complaints from those who frequent the Used Fair, the illegal possession and trade of protected wildlife was detected in an operation at the site.
Within the framework of the case, about 15 people testified, including their employers: they gave information about Darío Sebastián’s work at the Used Fair, but They said that they had not seen him on January 17, according to what PROFILE was able to learn.
The testimonies of people from the area about other alleged criminal acts that could be collected in a particular way by the lawyers of Codina Bandes and his family were not later officially ratified before the Justice.
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“I could have been a victim of some kind of crime”: the prosecutor’s hypothesis
The cause is labeled as “investigation of whereabouts” and was left in charge of the prosecutor Gustavo Pirrello in the Investigation Prosecutor’s Office No. 17 of the Homicide Prosecutor Unit, who is also in charge of the case of Nataniel Guzmánthe lawyer disappeared in Mendoza in the same month.
The time elapsed since his disappearance and some indicators of the environment in which he worked seem to direct the case towards the worst possible scenario. “The Course of Investigation makes it presume that he could have been a victim of some type of crime, taking into account the passage of time and that there is nothing new about where he is,” says the prosecutor when asked by PROFILE.
Pirrello also mentions “a context” of activities “linked to the theft of motorcycles, disarmament, consumption and sale of drugs” around the 27-year-old. “The context in which he moved was quite complicated, but we are in the middle of the investigative process with a lot of measures tending to have a tip that allows us to advance on the whereabouts,” he adds.
At this point, the head of the Mendoza Investigation Prosecutor No. 17 says that both the employer of Codina Bandes and those around the Used Fair are under investigation: “We understand that if something happened, it was in the context of the fair where he lived.”
The testimonies about alleged illegal acts or information about what may have happened with Darío, says the prosecutor, were not ratified as such when those people were summoned to testify. “They state that they do not know what happened to Sebastián, or those circumstances. Each witness is offered to testify under the reserved identity figure, but we have not had witnesses agree to testify with that figure or information that can be corroborated by the reward, “he explains. Pirrello.
Inés Bandes tries to channel all the information she receives towards the investigators and, in each of the publications on her social networks, she asks that those who know something about her son be encouraged to speak before the prosecutor’s office. He says that in these months, on several occasions, they asked him for money in exchange for releasing Dario from an alleged kidnapping, with threats to kill him if he did not: “I made bank transfers, I took money to a place… we have suffered all that type of scams,” he says.
“We have spent seven months where nothing can be known”, Bandes summarizes that, when asked what he thinks happened to his son, he says that he maintains the illusion of seeing him again: “I don’t know if at this point I can find him alive, but it is the illusion that I have. My goal is to be able to find him, to really know what happened to him, who are the actors in this and let justice be done.”
The Ministry of Security of the province of Mendoza offers a $1,350,000 reward for anyone who can provide information that leads to clarifying the disappearance of Darío Sebastián Codina Bandes. They can be contacted at 0800 222 6111/ 358 71759 and 911.
The plaintiff lawyers requested from the authorities an increase in that amount and an offer of compensation also at the national level, which is still in process.
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