Overview
- Braian Nahuel Paiz and Ezequiel David Pereyra, who had been on house arrest, were released Wednesday after a Buenos Aires hearing and will await trial on drug-supply charges.
- The court set strict controls that include monthly court check-ins, reporting study or work addresses, a ban on leaving Argentina, a no-contact order for Pereyra covering nine witnesses, and removal of ankle monitors.
- Prosecutors opposed release by pointing to the potential prison term, but Judge Karina Andrade said they failed to show a concrete risk of flight or witness interference, and the family’s legal team did not object.
- The case shifted to the Buenos Aires city courts on March 11 after a jurisdiction ruling that placed it under local contraventional proceedings focused on alleged delivery of cocaine.
- Investigators say the men supplied cocaine in the days before Payne’s October 2024 fatal fall, with evidence from hotel cameras, phone chats, and witnesses, and a forensic report found alcohol, cocaine, and the antidepressant sertraline and ruled out a fight or suicide.