Colombian beauty queen’s lawyer says Argentines lack evidence she joined drug trafficking gang

Beauty queen’s lawyer denies evidence of drug link

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The lawyer for a beauty queen accused of luring models into drug trafficking insisted Thursday that the evidence against her is purely cosmetic.

Former Colombian coffee queen Angie Sanclemente Valencia was detained Wednesday in the capital’s fashionable Palermo neighborhood, where she had been living under a false identity, dyed her dark brown hair reddish-blonde and told people she was a Mexican student.

“There isn’t a single indication of a direct link between Miss Sanclemente Valencia and this gang,” attorney Guillermo Tiscornia told reporters before her appearance in a closed-door hearing Thursday.

Argentine authorities say she is suspected of leading a ring that recruited pretty young women to carry cocaine on flights to Cancun, Mexico.

They launched their investigation in December, when a young Argentine woman was arrested at the Ezeiza international airport with 55 kilograms (120 pounds) of cocaine in her baggage. Police soon arrested six people, including Sanclemente’s Argentine boyfriend and his uncle.

Tiscornia told Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper last week that evidence against his client was based on a report of an overheard conversation and that those involved had denied the report.

Sanclemente, 30, who had been working as an actress in Mexico, told El Tiempo that she believes she was framed by relatives of her Argentine boyfriend.

Sanclemente’s mother, Jeannette Valencia, also insisted her daughter is innocent, and repeated fears that her beauty will invite attacks in prison.

“She never had anything to do with drug trafficking. She’s always been a woman who kept to a clean life; in Mexico she acted like a well-respected lady,” Valencia told reporters.

Judge Rafael Caputo has 10 days to determine whether to formally charge Sanclemente.