Overnight prosecutors in Argentina went public with more details of dossiers into the events leading up to Liam Payne’s death, revealing they had “incriminating” witness statements from FIVE hotel employees
Prosecutors have laid bare their evidence against two men told yesterday they would be put on trial over tragic musician Liam Payne’s Buenos Aires hotel death.
Waiter Braian Nahuel Paiz and former hotel worker Ezequiel David Pereyra have been languishing in prison since the start of January after being charged with selling the former One Direction singer the cocaine he snorted and smoked before his fatal third-storey drug-fuelled balcony plunge.
Argentinian public prosecutors were known to have obtained incriminating phone messages and hotel CCTV footage which included images of Liam standing by the open door of a lift at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel and chatting with a man identified as Pereyra shortly before the singer died on October 16 last year.
During the brief encounter the 31-year-old Brit is said to have asked him for “seven grams of the same drug he had handed him earlier.”
Overnight prosecutors went public with more details of their dossiers, revealing they had “incriminating” witness statements from FIVE hotel employees against 24-year-old Pereyra, who like Paiz has been warned he faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, and CCTV footage showing him handing Payne cocaine outside the artist’s room around an hour and ten minutes before he died.
Pereyra has been accused of selling Liam cocaine twice, the second time “between 3.30 and 4pm on October 16.”
Argentina’s public prosecution service said in a statement referencing Pereyra: “One of the witnesses that compromised him the most was the hotel’s head of general maintenance.
“He testified that around 9pm on 14 October he met Pereyra in a lift, saw that he had a $100 note in his hand and when he asked him if it was a tip and who had given it to him, said Pereyra replied that he had to ‘run an errand for a guest’ which he later explained was ‘to bring drugs’.
“At 2:30 a.m. on 15 October, Payne asked the hotel receptionist for a taxi to an address – Pereyra’s home at 2800 Homero Street in the Lomas de Zamora district of Buenos Aires – because ‘someone had to bring him something’.
“Prosecutors determined, from the statement of the driver of the Cabify app car that made the trip, and from the images of the security cameras outside the hotel, that Pereyra arrived at the door of the hotel at 3.25am, met Liam Payne in the street outside and walked with towards the corner of Costa Rica and Dorrego Avenue, where a camera captured the accused man with ‘some kind of wrapper in one of his hands.’”
Lead prosecutor Andres Madrea revealed a computer technician who works for the CasaSur Hotel has also incriminated Pereyra. He said: “The employee, who speaks English, shared a lift with Payne the afternoon of his death. He has testified that when they reached a hotel basement Liam began to talk while still inside the lift with Pereyra, who was arranging some chairs outside the lift, and he heard the musician say: ‘Hey man I will need another seven grams more for today.’”
Public prosecutors added in their statement: “Mr Madrea detailed in his trial request that the drug transaction took place around 3.45pm on October 16, in a third-floor corridor where cameras captured Pereyra’s arrival in the lift and the exchange.”
They said the indictment against Paiz, also accused of selling Liam Payne cocaine on two separate occasions in the run-up to his death, was based partly on messages the two men had exchanged discovered on the singer’s phone after he plunged to his death.
Prosecutors revealed more detail about the conversations between the pair, who met at a restaurant the musician dined at in the upmarket Buenos Aires neighbourhood where Paiz was working as a waiter.
They said: “Lead prosecutor Andres Madrea reproduced in his trial request an exchange of messages in the early hours of October 14, where the singer asks the accused for five or five grams and the waiter replies an hour later that he had obtained three grams with the phrase in English: ‘I think I got to three.
“Paiz then sent the musician several photographs related to narcotics, including one of a transparent plastic bag with a white powder, after which they agreed that the waiter would go to the CasaSur Hotel where the accused arrived at 3:24am according to the security camera records.
“This shows that the accused Paiz, at Payne’s request, went to the hotel in question, stayed in his room, where he gave cocaine to Payne, until he left at around 8:15 am.”
They went on to detail the second “drug deal” later the same day when Liam Payne took a taxi to Paiz’s flat to pick up cocaine – and reference another subsequent message exchange about a third “possible deal” which they said ended with the singer writing: “I have DOLLARS US 100. Party.”
Three other men initially charged over Liam’s death were told in February the case against them had been dropped.
Liam’s close friend Rogelio Nores, hotel receptionist Esteban Grassi and hotel head of security Gilda Martin were accused of his manslaughter by a female lower court judge before reversing her decision on appeal.
No date has yet been set for the Paiz and Pereyra trial although it is expected to kick off shortly.
Paiz, who has previously protested his innocence, spoke again from prison this week to repeat an earlier claim that he had shared drugs with the artist but hadn’t committed the serious offence of selling him narcotics.
The 25-year-old whined in an interview with Argentinian media outlet Infobae from his jail cell at a Buenos Aires police station: “I don’t know what I’m doing here, I’m a good person.
“I shared drugs with Liam but I didn’t sell them.”
Describing himself as a drug user who started smoking marihuana as a youngster, he added: “All I want to do is start studying again and leave jail to work, like I was doing before.
“I regret now giving Liam my Instagram because it all spiralled from there.
“If I hadn’t I’d probably be working today, I’d be studying, I’d be doing videos because before meeting Liam I’d participated in the filming of a video-clip for YouTube for a singer and other videos for TV.
“I miss the freedom I had, I miss work, I miss my family, my mum and my sisters.”
Pereyra handed himself in on January 6 after making himself a fugitive the previous week following failed police attempts to locate and arrest him so he could be remanded in pre-trial custody on the orders of an investigating judge. He has yet to make any public comment.