Argentine Senator Accuses AFA Leadership of Fraud

National Senator Patricia Bullrich has filed a complaint with the CONMEBOL Ethics Committee against the president of the AFA, Claudio 'Chiqui' Tapia, and his right-hand man and treasurer of the organization, Pablo Toviggino, for alleged fraudulent schemes. 'They must thoroughly investigate this mafia that runs the AFA and dirties Argentine football,' said the former Minister of Security for the government of Javier Milei. Bullrich, who had warned that she would go after the AFA bosses as soon as she took her oath upon returning to the National Congress, is keeping her promise and attacks Tapia and Toviggino, who these days are at the center of the judicial and media agenda due to the endless ramifications of the case investigating the company Sur Finanzas, strongly linked to the head of the AFA, with alleged money laundering. In her complaint, the senator accuses Tapia and Toviggino of 'alleged violations of the CONMEBOL Code of Ethics and the CONMEBOL Anti-Corruption, Anti-Bribery and Compliance Policy, in particular regarding the principles of integrity, fiduciary duty, conflict of interest, transparency in contracting, proper use of resources, and prevention of money laundering within member federations'. In this sense, she points out that 'the highest authorities of the Argentine Football Association (AFA), are linked to contractor companies of the body, show possible unclarified conflicts of interest and coincide temporally and materially with ongoing judicial investigations for alleged money laundering, tax evasion and concealment of assets'. Bullrich understands that Tapia and Toviggino would be involved in a series of irregularities such as the 'alleged use of shell companies', 'acquisition of goods of very high value through companies linked to the leadership environment', 'direct contracts between the AFA and linked companies', 'abrupt and incompatible increase in assets', 'the parallel investigation into Sur Finanzas and the AFA' and 'other administrative and tax investigations against the AFA'.