A federal prosecutor requested that the case against the president and manager of a private security and cash transport company be brought to trial for the improper retention of a figure greater than 1,000 million pesos and one million dollars belonging to to a fast food firm, a private bank and a bingo manager, judicial sources reported today.
The request for trial was made by the prosecutor Leonel Gómez Barbella, in charge of the 8th National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office, who asked the 31st judge of the same jurisdiction, Carlos Bruniard, to try Lucas Daniel Zeballos (32) as author and JECI as necessary participant in the crime of fraud due to improper withholding.
According to what was reported by the institutional website www.fiscales.gob.ar, both, president and commercial manager respectively of the Codecop firm, kept money that they had to transfer and/or safeguard according to the service provision contracts entered into with the Banco Galicia, Arcos Dorados Argentina SA and the Codere Group.
Zeballos has been detained since October of last year, while JECI remains free.
The investigation began on July 9 last after Codecop was denounced by Banco de Galicia at the 1D Neighborhood Police Station of the City Police because it was “illegitimately withholding sums of money in pesos and in foreign currency from the entity.”
In total, the plaintiff attorneys presented documentation that showed the absence of 371,169,969.50 pesos, 1,235,760 dollars and 42,000 euros.
The sources detailed that this money was recovered in its entirety after some raids on the Posadas, Misiones, and Florencio Varela plants, in the south of the Buenos Aires suburbs.
For this fact, the National Criminal and Correctional Court 31 prosecuted Zeballos, then president of the firm, without preventive detention for “fraud due to improper retention.”
However, the investigation continued after another complaint made in October by Arcos Dorados, which accused him of missing at least 642,769,056.50 pesos, 37,117.85 euros and 124,469.91 reais.
Likewise, according to the accusation, the defendants withheld the collection of the bingos operated by the Codere group, for an amount greater than 130 million pesos.
As a result, the magistrate ordered a series of raids on nine homes both in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, as well as in different locations in the Province of Buenos Aires and in the City of Posadas.
The police personnel established that the money was not stored in the plants operated by the transporter and that only 1,868.58 dollars, 124,119.95 reales, 2,951.12 euros and 4,954,000 pesos were found at the Florencio Varela plant. while in Mar del Plata they found 618,961.25 pesos.
Given this situation, Zeballos was arrested and during the investigation he refused to testify about Iturralde’s accusation.
“Despite the obligations contractually assumed, and having been reliably instructed to do so, he has voluntarily omitted, first to transfer, and then to deliver to Banco Galicia, Adasa and the Codere Group, the millionaire sums already detailed, which were hoarded in his different plants, thus improperly withholding said funds, to the clear detriment of the named firms”, affirmed the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) regarding Zeballos in its request.
Regarding the commercial manager, the prosecution maintained in its accusation that “not only was he not ignorant of the details of the diversion of money to the detriment of the affected companies, but he was also an active part of them, being the main intermediary with them, and provided evasive answers in order to buy time before the claims made”.
On the other hand, the father of the arrested man, Carlos Zeballos (53), who also became president of Codecop and had an international arrest warrant since December 2018 in a case of extortion, was arrested in August 2019 in Mar del Silver.
