Elisa Carrió hits out at ‘Chiqui’ Tapia over alleged front men | OneFootball

Elisa Carrió decided to fully involve herself in the judicial scandal that implicates the head of the AFA, Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, and accused two people of being alleged frontmen for the man who pulls the strings of Argentine football.

Together with the president of the Civic Coalition of Pilar, Matías Yofe, and Buenos Aires legislator Facundo del Gaiso, Carrió requested an investigation into Luciano Nicolás Pantano and Ana Lucía Conte, a self-employed worker and a retiree, for the purchase of a stunning mansion in Villa Rosa, Pilar.

Pantano and Conte are the owners of Real Central SRL, a company that, according to the document accessed by Clarín, allegedly acquired the property consisting of two lots with a total area of 105,384.80 square meters.

“The mentioned address would correspond, according to the information gathered, to a large estate, where there would be vintage cars, an Arabian and thoroughbred horse farm, an equestrian training track, a helipad, and multiple sports facilities,” the presentation text states.

“Even if the property had been acquired by the company, whose owners are the accused individuals, after increasing their share capital, that increase would in no way justify the financial transaction for the supposed acquisition of such a property, not only because of its size but also because of the luxury infrastructure inside,” the accusers point out.

“With just a bit of common sense, one infers the evident impossibility of affording such a significant economic purchase,” they add.

To reach this conclusion, Carrió, Yofe, and Del Gaiso provide a detailed account of the corporate structure and suspicious million-dollar transactions involving Pantano and Conte, behind which, they reported to the CC-ARI before the PROCELAC, are Tapia and Pablo Toviggino, his aide and AFA treasurer.

Suspicious Partnership and the Connection with Tapia

Luciano Pantano formed a company called Central Park Drinks SRL in February 2021, with a capital of 300,000 pesos along with a partner: Diego Adrián Lucero. A year later, in February 2022, Lucero transferred his shares, 50% of the company, to Ana Lucía Conte. Up to that point, nothing seemed unusual. However, everything changed in June 2024 when Lucero relinquished most of his shares to Conte, but at the same time, she resigned from her managerial position and the company decided to change its name to Real Central SRL.

In this change of corporate name, not only was their corporate purpose expanded, but there was also a suspicious injection of funds amounting to 58 million pesos. Two weeks later, they state in their presentation to the judiciary, the company allegedly acquired the controversial property in Pilar.

How do they connect the company Real Central SRL with the head of AFA? The key figure here is Lucas Labbad, who held a managerial position at Boca Juniors during Daniel Angelici's tenure at the club now presided over by Juan Román Riquelme.

“In January 2023, Pantano became the president of the company Mendoza Wines SA and partnered with Lucas Labbad, former general manager of Boca Juniors, in the vineyard business. Lucas Labbad is a recognized figure within the Argentine football ecosystem and gained notoriety for his performance as General Manager of Club Atlético Boca Juniors during Daniel Angelici's administration,” explains the document in the possession of PROCELAC.

“In that role, he assumed a central role, managing administrative, contractual, and operational areas, and maintaining institutional ties with key players in national and international football. His profile was consolidated as that of a leader with a strong business imprint applied to the sports field. After leaving Boca Juniors, Labbad remained connected to the football environment through various private business projects,” states the complaint filed by Carrió, Yofe, and Del Gaiso.

“Labbad's figure becomes particularly relevant concerning Pantano because his association and entry into the Mendoza Wines S.A. wine company would have allowed him to strengthen and deepen his positioning in the football business world and, in turn, this led him to become part of the direct environment of the high-level Argentine football leader we have already mentioned,” they point out.

And they highlight that “Lucas Labbad's career, his network of relationships in the professional football world, and the connection with Pantano are very key to understanding the expansion and positioning of the latter, to the point of being one of the partners of the company REAL CENTRAL S.R.L, which allegedly acquired the mentioned property - of such size and economic value - supposedly for this important leader,” they explain.

Tevez's Tweet Against Toviggino

Carrió and her leaders also provided several social media posts as part of the evidence in the case. One is a message from Carlos Tevez against Pablo Toviggino, AFA treasurer, dated March 5, 2024.

“I think all those trips back and forth to Pilar are making you lose it a bit, Toviggino. Besides the collection of vintage and imported cars you accumulate in Pilar, also burying the bags you brought from Qatar and the friendlies in China, memory Ali Baba,” fired the xeneize idol.

For Del Gaiso, Buenos Aires legislator of Lilita, that suggestive tweet is the tip of the iceberg in an alleged corruption plot and illicit money. “This tweet from @__CarlitosTevez from March 2024 could be the tip of the iceberg for the justice system to investigate.”

“Perhaps it begins a stage where: politics lets go of the hand; those who didn't want to see now look; those who were silent, speak; the possible frontmen break for fear of going to jail, impunity, silence, and fear end. That's when the ‘Argentina of the trap’ of @tapiachiqui and @TovigginoPablo loses. You have to know how to wait for the right times and build something different,” stated the Buenos Aires legislator.

Yofe, for his part, was more graphic. In an interview with TN, he said: “When you go to the neighborhood, people tell you clearly: this belongs to ‘Chiqui’ Tapia, this belongs to Toviggino, there is no one without the other, Toviggino is Tapia, just as Tapia is Toviggino,” he said. “We have seen containers and vintage cars enter,” he denounced.

The Lilito leader of Pilar sees connections also with the Almirante Brown club, where Pantano was deputy treasurer. “Coincidence? Nicolás Pantano was DEPUTY TREASURER OF Almirante Brown,” he wrote when the club from the lower divisions came out to support the head of AFA amid the accusations with a photo of Maximiliano Levy, former Boca hooligan and current president of the aurinegro, hugging him and Pablo Toviggino.

Among the elements they provide is also a video of a helicopter landing on the reported property. The images were published by journalist Tomás Díaz Cueto on his Instagram account.

“We cannot ignore that there are public (journalistic and social media) versions that would indicate that the property and the mentioned assets — vintage cars and racehorses, etc. — could belong to or be linked to Mr. Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, which reinforces the need to investigate the origin and traceability of these assets,” reads the complaint before the PROCELAC.

  See this post on Instagram   A post shared by Tomás Díaz Cueto (@tomasdiazcueto)

From Self-Employed to Millionaires

This could summarize the economic trajectories of Luciano Pantano and Ana Lucía Conte, accused by Elisa Carrió's Civic Coalition. Conte was a self-employed worker until August 2012 who, in 2020, according to official records, received an Emergency Family Income benefit, the subsidy paid by the National Government during the coronavirus pandemic. Another fact: in April 2021, she retired and began to have PAMI social security.

More information? In May 2022, she became a registered self-employed worker in Category T1 and declared having obtained gross income of $15,000 in 2024. This figure coincides with the moment she acquired the majority share package of Real Central SRL, before the company exponentially increased its income.

On the other hand, they claim that Luciano Pantano would still be a self-employed worker in category G, allowing him to bill up to 40 million pesos a year and would have had until September bank debts of just over 2 million pesos. “Clearly and with common sense, it would not place him in a position to afford, as a company partner, to own such a property,” they note in their document.

“It is necessary to remember that it would also be hardly believable that they are owners of a limited liability company that started with a share capital of 300,000 pesos, but that since May of last year has had an increase of that capital by the sum of 58,000,000 pesos. Which of them contributed the capital?, where would the funds have come from to do so? and how was it possible, even with that capital increase (which, at the dollar value in May 2024, would be equivalent to an approximate figure of U$ 60,000), they would have acquired such a property whose value must exceed that figure in millions?” the accusers ask.

And they add: “The unusual disproportion between the fiscal profiles and the declared income by the company owners and the high economic value of the allegedly acquired asset, located on the property, constitutes a relevant indication that warrants investigation, to determine the origin of the funds with which it was acquired, the real ownership of the assets, and the possible existence of concealment maneuvers or interposition of persons.”

“Alleged Frontmen”

“In other words, the possible use of the company as a front for third-party assets allows inferring the possible commission of the crime of money laundering through the concealment and disguise of the origin of high-value assets,” they conclude.

“The exposed background allows us to assert that Mr. Pantano and Ms. Conte would have acted as frontmen or figureheads, using the legal entity Real Central S.R.L. as a front company, with the sole purpose of hiding the identity of the true owner of the property and the contributed capital. The interposition of persons and the use of fictitious corporate structures to simulate commercial operations are typical of money laundering maneuvers, as recognized by our courts,” they argue.

“Indeed, jurisprudence has pointed out that the creation of a simulated legal business through frontmen - presenting as real a transaction that is actually false - constitutes an unequivocal indicator of money laundering activity, as it seeks to disguise the illicit origin of the assets by covering up the true beneficiary,” the complaint states.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.