The court will announce the verdict in the trial against businessman Enrique Blaksley Señorans, known as the “Argentine Madoff”, accused of being the head of an illegal association that defrauded more than 300 savers for some 185 million pesos through the Hope Funds firm between 2007 and 2016, judicial sources reported.
After a debate that lasted for more than two years, since it began in February 2021, the Federal Oral Court (TOF) 4 resumed the process at 9:30 a.m., first with the “last words” of 2 of the 16 defendants and, After a quarter intermission, at 1:30 p.m. the ruling will be announced.
In the pleadings stage, which took place between September and the end of last year, the trial prosecutor, Abel Córdoba, requested 10 years in prison for Blaksley (58) for considering him head of the illicit association, while sentences of between 5 and 6 years were required for the other 15 defendants, several of them relatives of the “Argentine Madoff”.
The businessman himself thanked in his “last words” for having been heard by the court during the debate, assumed that he made the firm’s decisions and asked for justice to be done
In turn, the Federal Administration of Public Revenues (AFIP), complainant in the case through the lawyers Santiago Lozano and Ramiro Buján, requested 12 years in prison for the main defendant, while another of the private complaints requested 18 years.
For his part, Blaksley’s defense, led by lawyer Mariano José Varela, requested his acquittal.
In this sense, the businessman himself thanked in his “last words” for having been heard by the court during the debate – in which he testified three times -, he assumed that he made the firm’s decisions and asked for justice to be done.
Blaskley was imprisoned in the Ezeiza prison and in March 2021 the court granted him a reprieve from preventive detention at home, although this measure only materialized last December, when the businessman managed to gather enough assets and money to pay the bail.
While, Marinao Moyano, one of the lawyers in the private lawsuit, told Télam that the ruling that will be announced is “very important.”but, in turn, a “first step” since there are more victims abroad of Argentina – he estimated about 800 -, of which his study represents about 400.
In fact, the lawyer promotes causes abroad, such as the Virgin Islands, in an attempt to find where the money from the million-dollar scams was taken.
For the accusers, Blaksley led a criminal organization that committed repeated scams related to the illegal collection of money from savers and then, in addition, committed crimes related to tax evasion and money laundering.
Blaksley and the rest of the defendants were sent to trial in July 2020. by decision of federal judge María Servini, who granted the request of federal prosecutor 12, María Alejandra Mangano; and prosecutor María Laura Roteta, from the Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Crime and Money Laundering (Procelac).
The businessman, who followed the trial virtually from the Ezeiza prison, is accused of having committed 318 frauds, after having captured savings from the public without being authorized to do so.
He is also accused of original asset laundering and two acts of fraudulent insolvency, that is, making assets disappear from his patrimony or diminishing their value to avoid compliance with obligations.
Among the accused are also Blaksley’s brother-in-law and administrative manager of Hope Funds, Federico Dolinkué; the person in charge of forming companies abroad, Alejandro Miguel Carozzino; and the commercial manager, his sister-in-law Verónica Vega, the businessman’s brothers Francisco, María Rita and Juan Pablo Blaksley.
In May 2021, Blaksley testified at trial and tried to improve the situation of the rest of the defendants, assuming that he had owned all the shares.
According to the research, Blaksley, with the collaboration of Carozzino, Dolinkue and Vega, would have set up a complex business structure that was used both to defraud private individuals and the national treasury, as stated in the indictment when the case went to trial.
According to the investigation, the illicit association, which operated between 2007 and 2016 and had members who, from their respective roles, contributed to the embezzlement, and also by around 60 commercial companies, many of them incorporated in the United States United States and Panama.
In May 2021, Blaksley testified at trial and tried to improve the situation of the rest of the defendants, by assuming that he had owned all the shares of Hope Funds, although he stated that he “never in his life” imagined defrauding his customers.
