The Paraguayan businessman is involved in the creation of several portfolio companies in tax havens, according to leaks from the world press through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, called Pandora Papers.
In May 2018, the newspaper LA NACIÓN published part of the reports generated after the Panama Papers scandal, in which It was revealed how Vierci’s companies were used to close million-dollar contracts for the television rights of the Paraguayan national team matches.
confidential documents revealed that AJ Vierci had several portfolio companies, such as Ciffart Sport SA and Juampa Trading Corp., the latter created in July 1996 in the Bahamas. These companies have in common that they were managed by the same law firm.
Despite having denied any ties to these companies, eventually, when the information was leaked, it was confirmed that Vierci was a shareholder of the aforementioned “desktop” firms, They were created to take over the television rights to the matches of the Paraguayan national team and also had business with at least one of the companies accused of bribing South American soccer officials.
CREATED IN PANAMA
According to the documents, Ciffart Sport SA was created in Panama through Mossack Fonseca by the Vierci Group, just a few weeks after Juan Ángel Napout -currently imprisoned and sentenced in the US- took over as president of the APF. Two months later he obtained the television rights for the Albirroja matches. For it He submitted an offer of almost US$6,000,000, when he had declared capital of just US$10,000.
Ciffart Sport SA also appears linked to Datisa, one of the companies accused by the US court of having paid bribes to leaders of the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) to win the broadcasting rights of all the competitions organized by the latter.
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Until the appearance of Ciffart, the television rights of the Albirroja matches were managed by TRAFFIC (Ciffart is Traffic backwards), whose owner, the Brazilian businessman José Hawilla, confessed to having paid millionaire bribes to FIFA leaders. Remarkably, a company with a declared capital of just US$10,000 made an offer of almost US$6,000,000 to obtain these rights. Four years later, in 2011, the firm would have paid some US$ 20 million for the television rights of the Copa América matches at the local level.
On October 4, 2011, the continuity of the relationship between Ciffart and the APF was sealed, with the signing of a new contract for the assignment of rights, this time for the Brazil 2014 and Russia 2018 qualifiers. Pablo presented himself as a representative of Ciffart Troche, who signed the contract.
In exchange for the assignment of rights, Ciffart paid him $7 million for the 2014 playoff games and $8 million for the 2018 playoffs.
In June 2015, a few hours before the start of the Copa América in Chile and being the center of countless questions about the negotiations for the transfer of broadcasting rights to Paraguayan radio stations, which had to pay an exorbitant amount for the broadcasts, Ciffart Sport paid for a reserved space in the written media in which it claimed to have and never had any relationship with the Traffic or Datisa companies.
However, shortly aftere announced a contract by which Datisa ceded the radio transmission rights of the Copa América matches in Chile to Ciffart and this in turn to the firm Servicios Digitales SA, another company of the Vierci Group, who was in charge of negotiations with the different stations interested in being able to broadcast the matches of the competition. Rights prices for the radios ranged from US$20,000 to US$5,000. The negotiations were carried out by Alejandro Peralta Vierci, media director of Grupo Vierci and nephew of AJ
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TAX EVASION
The offshore Ciffart Sport SA, created by the Vierci Group, stopped paying millions in taxes in the country. The aforementioned portfolio firm was instituted in Panama, and had a contract in force until October 2018 for the transmissions of the Paraguayan National Team qualifier matches, and sells the rights to broadcast local Albirroja matches to South American countries. Despite having a movement of millions of dollars, he never paid taxes in Paraguay.
The legal representative of the company, based in a tax haven, was Pablo Troche, who was a legal adviser for TV Acción (Telefuturo and Radio Monumental) and is married to Gisela Peralta Vierci, niece of Antonio J. Vierci.
