Argentine Judge Consolidates AFA Fraud and Money Laundering Cases

While the Court of Cassation still has to definitively decide which court will investigate the case of the villa in Pilar linked to authorities of the Argentine Football Association (AFA), federal judge of Campana Adrián Gonzalez Charvay has added a new case against the football organization. This magistrate still holds, at least for now, the case on who the real owners of the mansion in Pilar are, which is attributed to Pablo Toviggino, AFA's treasurer, and has now added the case for the alleged diversion of about 300 million dollars collected by the AFA in the United States, involving businessman Javier Faroni and his wife. This is because the investigating judge Paula Petazzi, who was handling this fraud case, reported by FIFA agent Guillermo Tofoni, declared herself incompetent and sent the file to Campana, at the request of Judge González Charvay himself. This is the court where the AFA wants all its cases to remain, as it believes it will fare better there than in other jurisdictions. However, the Court of Cassation will have the final say, as it has called a hearing for April 30th between the accused and the prosecution. It will then decide. The Cassation judges Javier Carbajo, Angela Ledesma, and Mariano Borinsky will resolve whether the case, which investigates the real owners of a 20-million-dollar mansion in Pilar, will be handled in Campana or in the federal or economic criminal court of the Federal Capital. Now, Judge Petazzi has resolved to consolidate in Campana the cases for money laundering and the use of 'phantom' societies abroad. The center of the scandal lies in a presumed 'total dispossession of the AFA of around 300 million dollars'. According to the unifying hypothesis, the board of directors, composed of the president and his treasurer Toviggino, in alleged complicity with Erica Gabriela Gillette and Javier Horacio Faroni, orchestrated schemes for asset stripping through the American company TourProdEnter LLC. This firm was hired to exclusively manage the marketing of friendly matches, rights, and sponsorships of the National Team. In return, the company retained a 30% commission that 'would have no justification whatsoever' and acted as a vehicle to channel the money into phantom societies based abroad, preventing the millions from entering the official accounts and balances of the AFA, according to the hypothesis under investigation. The money trail includes transfers unrelated to the AFA's institutional life, such as the transfer of $40,000 sent to the account of María Florencia Sartirana, identified in the complaint as Toviggino's partner. The reason this case was sent to the federal court of Campana is that the judge understood that hiding millions through an 'international network of financial intermediaries' and offshore accounts could have affected the Argentine tax system and the state's coffers. And this, she said, impacted the declarations before the Tax and Customs Collection Agency (ARCA). Secondly, the court argued that the alleged internal fraud in the AFA is inextricable from subsequent money laundering acts. Separating both cases would hinder the search for truth and duplicate resources, the magistrate stated, understanding that the presumed fraudulent administration is the 'preceding crime' of money laundering. The ruling dismissed the claim of the complainant businessman Guillermo Tofoni, who wanted the fraud to be judged in the ordinary courts of the City of Buenos Aires under the argument that the AFA's headquarters is located on Viamonte Street and the contracts were signed in that jurisdiction. The court determined that separating the fraud episodes from the laundering ones 'would entail a legal scandal connected with jurisdictional insecurity' due to the risk of issuing contradictory rulings.