Argentine justice advances in investigation to the Leo Messi Foundation for allegedly washing

Very discreet, the federal judge in charge of penal sanctions, Gustavo Meirovich, opened an investigation on the Leo Messi Foundation Argentina for money laundering. The case is under investigation Barcelona's star player, his father Jorge Messi – the two vocal members of the NGO – and his brother Rodrigo, who holds the post of president. The complaint was filed by a former NGO employee who provided emails and documents related to alleged misappropriation of funds for the charitable NGO.

As he was able to rebuild Infobae from sources having access to the record – which is treated with extreme reserve by the Economic Criminal Court No. 8 – ordered by the magistrate at the end of last year a battery of measurements which rose after the legal fair in January. "The hypothesis of the investigation is still possible money laundering, not tax evasion," sources said.

Among the measures ordered by Judge Meirovich are the lifting of the banking and tax secrecy of Messi and his father, and who manages the business and image contracts of the player. Both they were imputed by the public prosecutor, Pablo Turano, under Article 303 of the Penal Code which mentions the crime of washing, although the prosecutor has defined a broader investigative objective, which could include possible main offense aggravated fraud.

Meirovich also asked AFIP the lifting of the tax secrecy of the foundation and of LIMECU SA, the signature of the Messi who has among his activities in Argentina the real estate and the management of the image rights of the player. Its name answers to the acronym of the full name and the last names of the player: Lionel Messi Cuccittini.

LIMECU participated in the signing in 2012 of the agreement of the Foundation with the Uruguayan company LAMFUR SA for the commercialization of derivatives in the image of Messi "in order to generate resources for social projects developed" by l & # 39; NGOs.

The contract signed between LAMFUR, the Leo Messi Foundation and LIMECU SA.

The payment agreed by LAMFUR to the Foundation was US $ 300,000, plus 10% of the sales of the items. However, it was not created for an NGO account, but for an account on the account of the London based sports activities company, AndBank, in London, Hanns Enterprises Ltd.

According to the complaint at the origin of this file, filed by Federico Réttori, this operation would involve a diversion of funds from the Foundation to a private company Messi.

From around Jorge Messi they explained to Infobae that "to the extent that the Foundation can not sign commercial agreements – for a beneficial purpose – nor receive a percentage of profit for profit-making activities, LIMECU intervened in order to sign the agreement". They admitted that sending money to an account abroad was "messy", but "All the money was then deposited to the Foundation in Rosario, which is in the account" Infobae asked for a copy of this documentation but he could not access it.

In addition to AFIP's request for collaboration, the magistrate asked the Financial Information Unit (FIU) to inform him of the existence of reports of operations. suspects (ROS) of the player, his father, the foundation and / or LIMECU, as well as the data of the shareholders and the final beneficiaries of the Uruguayan company LAFMUR and the British company Hanns Enterprises Ltd.

The magistrate also asked the FIU for data on the date of opening, the holder, the beneficiaries and the movements of a bank account on the AndBank of Luxembourg, where the payment of LAMFUR would have been poured.

I urge Spain

Another measure on which to wait for the Court's response is the warrant sent to Spain requesting a certified copy of the justified cause in Barcelona against the player and his father by defrauded the treasure in 4.1 million euros between 2007 and 2009. For this crime Messi was sentenced by the Spanish courts in June 2017 to 21 months in prison and his father to 15 months.. None were in prison because they did not have a criminal record and his sentence was less than two years.

As you may have known Infobae, the mandate aims to verify the existence of a tax offense committed in Spain, the proceeds of which – undeclared currency – could have been conveyed by the Leo Messi Private Foundation Argentina, to send to the accounts later off the coast. The information that should arrive from Spain would allow to delimit the investigation in Argentina, for example avoid double judgment and provide the possible data of interest for the file that is justified here.

So much Lionel as Jorge Messi are members of the NGO, while his brother Rodrigo is the presidentand his wife, Florencia Parisi, the secretary.

The applicant, Réttori, is an Argentine resident resident in Spain, who is developing social tasks within an NGO. He worked for several months for the Foundation between 2014 and 2015. He had already been called to testify three times as a witness in the file. letters and documents that the court of Meirovich tries to corroborate.

In the atmosphere of Jorge Messi, they claimed that "these same facts and the same documentation were already part of three previous complaints in the Argentine justice casetwo of the businessman Alejandro Rebossio (included in the criminal court file No. 8 and the appointed lawyers), and a third of Retreti himself before the Prosecutor in charge of the fight against money laundering, and were fired for lack of crime"

Messi with the manager of Ooredoo in Doha in 2013, donor of the Foundation.

With the sponsorship of lawyers Miguel Pierri and Pedro Fontanetto, Retteri asked that the case be now judged "amicus curiae"(friend of the court), but the application was rejected by Judge Meirovich, who resolved in the same direction as dictated by the prosecutor Turano. amicus allows to access the file and to actively propose measurements.

However, the magistrate stressed the value "for the promotion and the progress of the investigation" information and documentation provided by Reteti, and noted that his decision "would not prevent him from making contributions test or data relevant and useful to the investigation. "

Outstanding balances

On the basis of the reports of the private Leo Messi Argentina Foundation, a local subsidiary of the Spanish parent company, they ask the Court rebuild the cash inflows and outflows of the local subsidiary of the NGO created in Barcelona. From the badysis of the origin of the funds deposited as "donations" for charitable purposes and their destination, Its purpose is to determine whether the Foundation could have been used to launder money from Messi or other people, whether corporations or individuals.

As published Infobae, the rosarina subsidiary of the Foundation He had not submitted any balances since it was set up in 2009. He did not do so until last November. – after the beginning of the case before the Federal Criminal Court of the City of Buenos Aires, where they had to regularize this situation. They did so in response to a request from the Santa Fe General Inspectorate for Legal Entities (IGPJ) not to comply with this legal requirement.

That's when the Foundation retroactively presented the balances corresponding to 2012 until 2016as well as the status of its constitution. However, as this ground could be determined, neither the pleadings nor the vouchers of the accounts would have been submitted at that time.

Nearly Jorge Messi said that "the balance sheets were presented at the time before the AFIP" and that the non-filing before the IGPJ santafesina was due to the fact that "The administrative structure is very small and the advice given in the early years was not adequate." ante Infobae they badured: "We are very calm, everything is in order."

Those The sales and souvenirs of the Foundation's subsidiary in Rosario have not been published on the NGO's website, as it is available online last balance sheet of the parent company in Spain, transparency requirement of the Protectorate of the Generalitat, the body that controls the foundations in Catalonia.

Clean office rental

In December Infobae revealed that when presenting his last balance in Spain corresponding to 2017, the Foundation had to correct the number of revenues, expenses and investments compared to what had been reported the previous year before the Barcelona authorities. The reason? Comply with the law of charities. For him had to submit corrective balances from 2013 to 2017that is to say, he had officially registered – seven years after its creation – he would have had to start presenting them to the Catalan protectorate.

Expenditures for 2016, which have been corrected and reported in the balance of 2017, The Foundation has informed for the first time the payment of the rent of the offices of the Argentine subsidiary in Rosario, for more than 73,000 euros per year, equivalent to about 6,000 euros per month.

According to the official data of the real estate registry to which Infobae had access through a domain property application, the offices rented by the Foundation in Rosario belong to LIMECU, the company of Messi.. In other words, the NGO pays about 140,000 pesos a month (at the December 31, 2017 exchange rate) to a Messi company for rent for the entire 11th floor located at 1668 / 70 Alvear Street in order to operate in Rosario.

A trusted interlocutor of Jorge Messi explained before Infobae this amount "includes the renting of another plot of Tucumán Street used by the Foundation for the inclusion of modest boys in sport". They also claimed that "there was nothing illegal" and that "they did not rent the offices to LIMECU – who had to pay VAT on that amount – they had to do it to a third party "and that they" so had everything about Messi in the same place. "

The payment of this rent is part of the 420,000 euros that had not been included in the 2016 balance sheet expenditures and investments, which have been rectified and declared in the 2017 balance sheet. In this way, it is possible to check what it means by comparing the two scales to which he had access.

This "readjustment" of expenditures would have allowed the Foundation to comply with the legal requirement to invest, at a minimum, 70% of its income in charitable actions for which the entity was createdonce the operating expenses have been deducted, within a maximum of four years. This gives the Foundation the advantage of not taxing the Spanish Treasury on this money received for the purpose of benefiting from social badistance.

From the environment of Jorge Messi, before the consultation of Infobae, argued that these inconsistencies in the balance sheets "do not constitute a crime", but "in any case, the product of bad advice in the early years of the foundation" and these rectifications concerned the "accountability" of the Foundation. They pointed out that when studio Cuatrecasas entered as Messi's lawyers, one of the most important of Barcelona, ​​they sought to "put everything in order". They also pointed out that The Foundation's 2017 balance sheet has been audited by Grant Thornton, an international consulting firm.

This audit revealed that after "having selected by a coverage test the invoices and the corresponding payments", the expenses of the entity "are related to the approved projects". However, the consultant warned in his report that the NGO itself is responsible for "the formulation of annual accounts that express the true image of the badets, financial situation and results of the Leo Messi Foundation".