An Argentinian waiter accused of being Liam Payne’s drug dealer today broke his silence to insist he had done nothing wrong.
Braian Nahuel Paiz, who was identified in an ongoing prosecution probe, admitted to two hotel meetings with the 31-year-old before his fatal October 16 plunge and confessed to taking drugs with him.
But he insisted he never supplied Liam with narcotics or accepted any money from him.
The 24-year-old said he spent the night with the former One Direction singer at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires during a second rendezvous.
Paiz, who appeared on Argentinian TV on Saturday, claimed that he first met Liam at the restaurant where he worked in the upmarket neighbourhood of Puerto Madero. He said he exchanged contact details with the singer as he dined with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy and two other people.
He spoke in an on-camera interview to journalist Guillermo Panizza, who at points had to clarify to a programme host in the studio what Paiz meant to say when the young man’s nerves seemed to get the better of him.
After first bumping into Liam at the restaurant where he worked, Paiz said he next saw him on October 2 at an arranged meeting at a hotel where the singer was staying.
‘I never supplied Liam with drugs,’ he said. ‘Liam’s first contact with me was at my place of work.
‘We swapped details and saw each other later that night. It was all normal. He came down from his hotel room to fetch me because I had got lost.’
Naming the hotel where they first arranged to meet as the ‘Hyatt in Palermo’, he added: ‘We got together there and he showed me some of the music he was going to bring out.
‘I’ve heard people saying he was taking drugs but the truth is that when he got to the restaurant where I was working he was already under the effects of drugs and he didn’t actually eat anything.
‘There was a moment when he approached me and asked me for my contact details. I gave him an Instagram and afterwards he sent me messages because he wanted to take drugs although he had already consumed narcotics.
‘It was October 2. While I was in his room we had some whisky shots.’
The TV programme showed viewers a photo of him and Liam together, which was said to have been taken during their first hotel meeting.
Paiz said they next met on October 13 at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, three days before Liam’s death.
‘We spent the night together, we consumed drugs because the truth is that something intimate happened, he said.
‘He wasn’t aggressive at all, he behaved really well with me, he was really sweet. He asked me if I was okay.
‘I’ve got all the messages where we arranged that second meeting. I haven’t erased anything.’
Paiz claimed he did not take any cash from the singer.
‘We took drugs together but I never took drugs to him or accepted any money,’ he said.
‘I have messages where he’s offering me money because he was apparently used to offering money for everything but I never accepted anything.
‘When I left he wanted to give me some clothes so that I had a memory of being with him but I left it behind the TV because I didn’t want to take it. It was some grey jogging bottoms and a T-shirt.
‘I told Liam a best friend of mine wanted to meet him because he was a fan. He said ”yes” and after I went he appeared outside the place where I lived and managed to get halfway into the building and wanted us to go back to his hotel but I told him I couldn’t because I had to go to work.
‘I was due to start at 11.30am but I had to arrive beforehand. That was the last time I saw him. He got into his taxi and left.’
Paiz, who is said to have been sacked from his job after his implication in the ongoing criminal probe, is the second person linked to Liam to speak out.
Liam’s close friend Rogelio ‘Roger’ Nores protested his innocence after being named locally last week as one of the trio under investigation.
Responding to the reports which identified him as one of the suspects linked to the drug accusations and allegations he abandoned Liam before his death, the businessman – who has previously been described as the singer’s manager – said: ‘I never abandoned Liam, I went to his hotel three times that day and left 40 minutes before this happened.
‘There were over 15 people at the hotel lobby chatting and joking with him when I left. I could have never imagined something like this would happen.
‘I’ve given my statement to the prosecutor on October 17 as a witness and I haven’t spoken to any police officer or prosecutor ever since.
‘I wasn’t Liam’s manager. He was just my very dear friend.’
He added: ‘I’m really heartbroken with this tragedy, and I’ve been missing my friend every day.’
The third suspect, who is yet to speak in public, has been named locally as a hotel worker called Ezequiel David Pereyra, 21.
Prosecutors said in their lengthy statement released last Thursday that three men they did not identify by name were now being formally investigated on suspicion of abandoning a person who subsequently died and supplying and facilitating drugs.
The statement described one as the person who ‘routinely accompanied Liam during his stay in Buenos Aires.’
Tests have shown the 31-year-old took alcohol and cocaine before he died and also had traces of an antidepressant in his system.
Prosecutors also made it clear the idea Liam had committed suicide had been ruled out and said he was in a state of ‘semi or total unconsciousness’ as he fell to his death when he ‘didn’t know what he was doing.’
They said of the hotel worker and the alleged ‘drug dealer’: ‘The second suspect is a hotel employee who must respond for two proven supplies of cocaine to Liam Payne during the time he was in the hotel.
‘The third is also a drug dealer who is being investigated on suspicion of another two clearly proven supplies of cocaine at two different times on October 14.’
It emerged over the weekend that Argentinian police are still hunting Liam’s missing Rolex watch.
Liam is said to have been seen wearing the Rolex in CCTV images and other photos incorporated into the prosecution case files shortly before he died around 5pm local time on October 16.
A judicial source told newspaper La Nacion: ‘We know from images that have been analysed that Liam had the watch on the day of his death.
‘He had it in one of his hands and he had it at least two to three hours before his fatal hotel fall.
‘We looked for it in his hotel room and couldn’t find it.
‘The watch was searched for in the homes of the three people being investigated on suspicion of abandoning Liam and the supply and facilitation of drugs, as well as in the homes of the two female escorts who were with him in his room the afternoon he died.
‘The room is still sealed off by court order and no- one can enter.’
Liam’s father Geoff flew to Argentina two days after his son died and returned to the UK with his body last Thursday to help finalise funeral arrangements following a second visit to the makeshift shrine set up fans outside the singer’s hotel.
The funeral is expected to take place in Liam’s home town of Wolverhampton.
