'Incriminating' evidence in Liam Payne death investigation revealed by prosecutors

Liam Payne, the Wolverhampton-born former One Direction star, died in October 2024 at the age of 31 after falling from a third-floor balcony in Buenos Aires. 

The fall resulted in multiple injuries and internal and external bleeding, leading to his death. 

The Buenos Aires prosecutor's office has charged five people in connection with Payne's death, including a friend, hotel staff, and those who supplied drugs. Three had their charges dropped in February 2025. 

Yesterday, two people - a waiter named Braian Nahuel Paiz and former hotel worker Ezequiel David Pereyra - were told they would face trial after being charged with supplying the singer with cocaine before his fatal fall.

The pair have been in prison since they were charged at the start of January. 

Now, Argentinian public prosecutors have laid bare the evidence they have against them both. 

Reports say they have obtained 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.

Payne allegedly asked him for “seven grams of the same drug he had handed him earlier.”

Prosecutors have also gone public with supposedly “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 charges against Paiz, who is also accused of selling Liam Payne cocaine twice before his death, were partly based on messages found on the singer’s phone after he died.

Prosecutors shared more details about their conversations. The two had met at a restaurant in an upmarket Buenos Aires neighbourhood, where Paiz was working as a waiter and the musician had gone to eat.

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 $100. Party.”