The British Virgin Islands, the tax haven that exposed Daniel Muñoz, his widow and his offshore empire

Daniel Muñoz, former private secretary of Nestor Kirchner, enjoyed his closeness to power until in April 2016, the international investigation Panama Papers revealed that with his wife, Caroline Pochetti, he owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. This journalistic discovery was the beginning of the decline of the marriage a native of Santa Cruz, when he reopened a federal justice investigation into money laundering that had been paralyzed since 2013.

Muñoz died of cancer at the age of 59 in May 2016, without ever being tried. But he left behind a complex web of offshore companies he had managed to consolidate with a tremendous enrichment of wealth, upon his arrival at Casa Rosada by the hand of Néstor Kirchner. On behalf of leading figures, he consolidated a real estate emporium in the United States, without his name or that of his wife appearing.

In 2018, two years after this first revelation of Panama Papers, the former secretary who knew the secrets of Kirchner, his widow and the environment of the prestanombres of the marriage were accused of being the protagonists of the corruption plot linked to public works during Kirchnerism, revealed in the notebooks of corruption.

Today, Pandora Papers exposes missing pieces of this offshore network set up by Muñoz and Pochetti to hide black money abroad and the acquisition of millionaire assets from the eyes of the Treasury. The documents that appear in this leak from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) expose the only two companies in which Muñoz and Pochetti appear with their names as shareholders: Black Gold Limited and Old Wolf Limited.

The tax haven chosen in these only two cases was the British Virgin Islands (BVI), an overseas territory of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean, considered an ideal jurisdiction for setting up paper companies and moving money. without giving any explanation as to its origin. The Santa Cruz couple called on the services of the study Trident Trust, one of the service providers off the coast the world’s leading companies specializing in corporate formation and trust management, with offices in nearly two dozen jurisdictions.

The Pandora Papers documents consulted by the Argentinian ICIJ team, made up of Infobae, near The nation and elDiarioAR, expose new details in the documents of this second company that the Muñoz-Pochetti couple used to hide their fortune.

Change of hands

Old Wolf Limited “Members” are listed in a certificate contained in the Trident Trust Study email exchange: the former secretary of Néstor Kirchner owns 50% of the shares of the off the coast and his wife, Pochetti, with the other half. In total, they add up to 50,000 USD. Their names were stamped on the document, for less than a month before another quick handover: January 12 to February 5, 2015.

Old Wolf was actually registered in November 2012, a little over a year after the death of former President Kirchner, when Muñoz began to expand into his personal businesses, already far from Casa Rosada, and to purchase real estate in the country and abroad. As the owner, the documents show who was accused by the courts of acting like his front man: Sergio Todisco.

Todisco is a businessman from Mar del Plata, owner of a textile factory in this seaside resort, who served as a “front” for Muñoz in several companies abroad, together with his then wife, Elizabeth Ortiz Municoy, dedicated to real estate in this city on the coast of Buenos Aires. He was arrested in 2018 when the cause of the corruption notebooks erupted, and released two weeks later after declaring his repentance.

In this case, Ortiz Municoy also declared herself repentant at the end of 2018, and declared that her husband at the time regularly visited Muñoz at his home in the city of Buenos Aires in the district of Saavedra, and that “in on the upper floor there was a house department where Muñoz kept money in a safe ”. The repentant real estate entrepreneur clarified: “Muñoz would take out the money he put in backpacks or bags and give it to my ex-husband, who had been there once a week since 2010. He would withdraw between 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros or dollars. and sent that money abroad by exchange. Houses “.

On February 5, 2015, Muñoz and Pochetti transferred their shares in Old Wolf Limited to Mexican Isaac Esparza Hidalgo, according to a document to which he had access Infobae, which is signed in their own handwriting. No “payment” has been made explicit for this transfer of shares..

Resident in Monterrey, Esparza Hildalgo came from a field very different from that of real estate, and was not sure what he was getting involved in. As Infobae revealed in 2019, he was dedicated to advertising sports betting games in Monterrey, until in exchange for Pochetti’s cousin, Carlos Gellert, covering a gambling debt, he signed papers that make him the nominal owner of the shell companies of Kirchner’s former secretary and his widow.

The late Judge Bonadío requested his arrest in March of the same year. Isaac Esparza said Infobae At the time, he didn’t know who Daniel Muñoz was and that his only connection to the affair was with Gellert, whom he had known for 20 years playing poker in Monterrey, Mexico.

Investment property

On this form from the Trident Trust study, It is clarified that the object of Old Wolf Limited was the “holding of real estate” and the activity of “real estate management”. The “origin of funds” indicated “the purchase and sale of real estate” and “the commissions associated with these transactions”.

Argentinian justice determined that the Muñoz-Pochetti marriage had acquired through a dozen film companies registered in Florida, at least, 15 luxury apartments in Miami and two in New York at the Plaza Hotel, for a total value of approximately $ 73 million.

With Muñoz already deceased and after the revelations of Panama Papers In 2016, his widow and the frontmen of Kirchner’s former secretary sought to cede all properties purchased in the United States. Part of these funds ended up in a real estate investment in the Turks and Caicos Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, southeast of the Bahamas, to build a hotel center that never materialized.

Todisco was the director of Old Wolf Ltd until February 24 of the same year, when he was replaced by Perla Aydee Puente Resendez, also Mexican and a Gellert couple, son of Pochetti’s aunt and from Santa Cruz like her. In several of the documents available in the leak, her signature as director appears, as well as her passport. Puente Reséndez remained in this position until at least the end of 2016.

When the public works corruption notebook scandal erupted in the second half of 2018, Pochetti was arrested and, ultimately, and later declared repentant, gave details of the maneuvers before prosecutor Carlos Stornelli, which enabled him to get your freedom back. . Today, he awaits the oral trial for this case. The ICIJ team sought to consult it through its official defender, Hernán Silva. Muñoz’s widow thanked the contact, but said “she did not want to make any statement in this regard.”

Puente Reséndez was arrested in July 2019 in Argentina, Like the rest of Muñoz’s environment, in the same case, after local justice assessed an extradition request from Mexico.

The woman pointed out when questioned that she only complied with what her husband asked her and that she justified herself by saying that this is how Mexican culture is. “They were all very dear people to my husband, I did what he asked me without questioning,” he said, according to judicial sources consulted at the time by Infobae.

During the lawsuit against the widow of Muñoz and the entire marriage community who acted as name bearers in August 2019, Judge Claudio Bonadio established that “the channels of expatriation of money” started “from our country to bank accounts on behalf of corporations established in the United States. and controlled by companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands: Gold Black Limited and Old Wolf Limited ”. This tax haven, with white sand and turquoise sea, had become on Secretary Kirchner’s Achilles heel.

The study that registered the companies was free from any illegality. “Each of Trident’s business and trust services activities is regulated in the jurisdiction in which it operates and is fully committed to complying with all applicable regulations. Trident regularly cooperates with any competent authority requesting information. Trident does not talk to the media about its clients, ”the provider, who counted the former presidential secretary among his clients, replied to the ICIJ.

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