One of two people accused of supplying drugs to Liam Payne before his death in October 2024 in a Buenos Aires hotel has been arrested, police sources said on Friday. Braian Paiz, 24, is accused of delivering cocaine to the British singer two days before his fatal fall from his hotel room balcony. He is one of five people prosecuted in this case.
Paiz’s home, in Budge, Buenos Aires province, was searched by the police and the detainee was taken to court.
The prosecution declared on Monday that Braian Paiz was “accused of having delivered cocaine” to Liam Payne, whom he had visited at his hotel on October 14 and whom he had “accompanied to room No 310, entering the room with him. He stayed there for almost five hours. “We spent the night, we got high (…) something intimate happened,” he told Telefe Noticias.
In November, Braian Paiz denied in an interview that he supplied drugs to Payne, while admitting to meeting him and spending time with him in his room.
The Argentine courts established that he had “supplied drugs for money” and on Monday ordered the provisional detention of two of the five people prosecuted, including Paiz. “Three of the accused were charged without pre-trial detention for manslaughter, and the other two for the offense of supplying drugs” with pre-trial detention, the prosecution declared.
These are “RLN, agent of the victim (in Argentina) and who accompanied Payne on this trip to Buenos Aires in order to renew his American visa; the hotel manager, GAM, and the hotel reception manager, ERG”, and are liable to a sentence of one to five years in prison, according to the prosecution.
Liam Payne, 31, was found dead on October 16 following “multiple trauma” and “internal and external bleeding” after falling from the balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires, where he had been staying since a few days. According to the investigation, he had consumed alcohol, cocaine and antidepressants before his death.
