Court rejects Claudio Tapia's bid to leave freely for 60 days | OneFootball

Economic Criminal Court judge Diego Amarante today denied a request from Argentine Football Association (AFA) president Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia to leave the country for 60 days.

Amarante is investigating Tapia and the AFA for the alleged misappropriation of social security contributions and other tax irregularities, involving a sum that would exceed 19 billion pesos. The judge has already questioned Tapia, AFA treasurer Pablo Toviggino, and other Argentine football officials, and must now determine the procedural status of all of them.

Tapia had requested permission to remain outside the country for two months, but the judge found the reasons given by the football executive to be imprecise. The documents he submitted were outdated, and the judge also weighed unfavorable background in his conduct, according to judicial sources.

“Although this court has recently granted the named individual authorizations to leave the national territory, the current request is framed in a generic manner that differs substantially from the exceptional and limited permits that were the subject of previous rulings,” the judge’s decision says.

It adds: “The indeterminate nature of the destinations and the lack of a fixed agenda in the present request hinder the objective of ensuring the defendant’s continued subjection to the jurisdiction of this court.”

The judge stressed how “unusual” Tapia’s requests to leave the country are, given his public role at C.E.A.M.S.E., for which he earns “approximately” 19 million pesos per month.

“All of this without mentioning, certainly, how unusual it is to learn of the situation of someone who holds a public office for which he receives — according to his own statement in his questioning — approximately $19,000,000 per month, and who at the same time states that he spends more than a third of his time abroad, attending commitments related to other activities.”

Tapia’s permissions to leave the country have already had one chapter in the case. Judge Amarante denied him the possibility of traveling to Caracas, Venezuela.

Although he did not present it as a reason before the courts, Tapia allegedly wanted to travel there to return on the same flight as gendarme Nahuel Gallo, who was detained in Venezuela in December 2024 and released on March 1.

The courts denied him that possibility, partly because of the country’s weakened diplomatic relationship with Venezuela, but also because Tapia did not ask for “permission” to do so, and instead merely “informed” the court that he would travel there as part of a new leg of a trip that had indeed been authorized by the courts.

“On a previous occasion, after permission had been granted for specific destinations, the defendant sought to unilaterally modify his itinerary once he was outside the national territory,” Judge Amarante recalled today in his ruling.

In today’s ruling, Amarante referred to Gallo and to Tapia’s alleged undeclared intention to repatriate him: “The publicly known events that took place reveal another possible purpose of that trip, allowing the inference that the justification for the reasons for the trip presented by the accused to this court was — at the very least — partial,” the judge said.

Tapia and Toviggino, the AFA treasurer, are accused of the crime of failing to pay social security contributions for players and employees. According to the initial complaint, there was a total of $7,593,903,512.23 in obligations that were not deposited in due time and proper form, divided into two categories: tax withholdings and social security withholdings. In the expanded complaint, the reported amount rose to $11,759,643,331.62.

In his defense before the courts, Tapia argued that the AFA had committed no crime because an administrative resolution by the Ministry of Economy suspending tax enforcement actions was in force, and that therefore no crime could be said to have occurred.

He also stated — as Toviggino did — that a large part of that debt had already been settled, a fact that has already been confirmed by the courts, which are nonetheless investigating whether the delay in payment may have constituted the crime of tax misappropriation, punishable by prison terms ranging from two to six years.

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