Scandal over the «financial carousel»: BCRA fines, bans ARS Cambios | OneFootball

The Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) imposed a historic sanction against ARS Cambios SAS, a financial firm closely linked to Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia. It involves a fine of $18 billion and the company’s immediate disqualification, after detecting a complex currency “hand-off” mechanism that allegedly fed the parallel market during 2023.

The investigation, which puts the owner of the financial firm and Tapia associate Ariel Vallejo under scrutiny, revealed that the entity handled more than 25 million dollars without being able to justify either the origin or the destination of the funds. According to the BCRA’s case file, 99.1% of ARS Cambios’ transactions consisted of buying dollars at the official exchange rate and then reselling them to other exchange houses, in a maneuver known as the “financial loop” that took advantage of the 102% gap that existed during that period.

The president of the Argentine Football Association, Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, together with financier Ariel Vallejo. (Photo: Instagram/Ariel Vallejo).

The agency was blunt in its reasoning: the financial firm allegedly operated as a front to withdraw foreign currency from the official market and supply the “blue” dollar circuit. “Its purpose was not genuine sales to customers, but rather it constituted a mechanism to obtain economic profit with no apparent justification,” the official report stated, estimating that the total profit of the participants in this network was around 25.8 million dollars.

As a consequence of this scandal, the BCRA not only imposed the multimillion-dollar financial sanction, but also banned Ariel Vallejo for five years and his mother, Graciela Vallejo, for six years. Both are prohibited from holding positions in financial or credit institutions. The ruling, which is already affecting the circle around the head of the AFA, may only be appealed before the National Chamber of Appeals for Federal Administrative Litigation.

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