The head of Generación ZOE, Leonardo Cositorto, arrives in Argentina this Monday, extradited from the Dominican Republic, where he was arrested last Monday after being a fugitive since mid-March, to appear in court along with twenty other detainees for crimes of association. illicit and fraud, police sources confirmed to Télam.
The transfer of Cositorto to Argentina is in charge of the federal investigation division of fugitives and extraditions of Interpol Argentina that on Monday, around noon, will travel with the detainee to arrive at the Ezeiza international airport at midnight.
The agents had traveled to the Dominican Republic on Friday to bring the leader of Generación ZOE to the country but, in the absence of a vaccination card against Covid, on Saturday they carried out a PCR test to establish whether or not he had coronavirus before boarding the flight.
Cositorto is expected to be transferred to Villa María, Córdobaas of Tuesday, where the central headquarters of that organization worked and the case for “illicit association and fraud” of the members of the organization is filed.
Last Friday, the head of Generación Zoe in the city of Córdoba, Mariela Sánchez, accused of alleged “repeated scams and illicit association”, was arrested within the framework of the case investigated by the Prosecutor for Instruction, Juliana Compays. With the arrest of Sánchez there are 20 defendants under the jurisdiction of the Villa María justicein all cases for scams to savers who were recruited to invest millions of dollars in pesos and dollars.
Investors were tempted to receive high monthly interest that greatly exceeded what is offered in the formal financial market, through the Ponzi or pyramid scheme, as it is known.
The company led by Cositorto offered supposed assets, such as a cryptocurrency called Zoe Cash which went from being worth around 30 cents on the dollar at the beginning of the year to 0.04 cents today (-99.85%), and boasted of guaranteeing a return of 7.5% to 10% per month or up to 120% annually in dollars, in addition to having begun to invest in multiple businesses such as soccer, gastronomy, “the metaverse” and NFTs.
Preliminary investigations promoted after the denouncement of savers maintain that the scam is millionaire in pesos and dollarsand that there are thousands of people affected by the maneuvers in the Cordoba town of Villa María, as well as in other provinces of Argentina and in other Spanish-speaking countries.
The procedures began on February 18, based on the complaint of savers who did not recover the investment, with raids on different associated entities in Villa María and Buenos Aires that, according to what is known from the preliminary investigation, Between March and November 2021, 14 commercial companies were createdsome of them the same day.
Among these are Prioli Construcciones, Generación Zoe, Universidad del Trading and Zoe Construcciones, established on March 18, 2021, and with movements of more than US$ 7 million detected so far.
In addition, the researchers found that, in October 2020, Cositorto canceled a debt that had been classified as “unrecoverable” by the Central Bank where it was listed as “delinquent and uncollectible”added the sources of the case.
Federal judge Ariel Lijo recently ordered searches in a case for alleged money laundering of the Zoe holding company. One of the operations was in the legal study of the former judge Héctor Luis Yrimia, Zoe’s legal adviser, who remains at large and has an international arrest warrant.
The General Inspection of Justice (IGJ) also initiated legal actions against Generación Zoe that are filed in the national courts of First Instance in Commercial Matters Number 14, Secretariat 28; and Number 26, Secretariat 51.
Also last Tuesday Operations were carried out in the Corrientes town of Goya, and three people were arrested for similar criminal maneuvers.
