Investigate a hotel chain for facilitating the money laundering of an international mega-group

The raids – more than 20 – took place on Tuesday. Five people have been arrested, three of whom will be extradited to the United States in the coming days. In recent hours, researchers have detected various links between those responsible for money laundering and a hotel chain – which has not been revealed – in Argentina.

The crime was committed as follows: the virtual pharmacy Goldpharma He offered an extensive menu of medical products. A person in the United States ordered a drug on the website and the sale was coordinated by a call center in Argentina. From this point, the internet portal was checked and the machines that would send the product from suppliers – in Romania and India – to the United States were put into operation. From this transaction Millionaire profits were obtained that were washed in the financial wineries of the city of Buenos Aires.

Sergio David Ferrari, one of the detainees, is accused of having acted as Facilitator to perform fund movements between different countries, through mechanisms for the transfer of funds.

One of them was charged on accommodation fees in Argentina. Judicial sources confirmed that most of his clients would be located in downtown Buenos Aires – one of them on Avenida 9 de Julio – and in the south of the country.

Your knowledge and ability to allow the entry and exit of our country's money Without being detected by the Federal Agency of Public Revenue (AFIP), they allowed them to create a commercial office – called Smile Payments– in the Porteño district of Villa Devoto, where more than fifteen people work.

During the exchange rate, several hotels in the country would have received cash dollars from their sales with credit cards, thus avoiding the equivalent in converted dollars at the official exchange rate. At the precise moment when a customer paid for their stay with a credit card (previously, the reservation or the entire stay), this was done over the Internet, by entering all the required information.

Thanks to a service rendered in Argentina – the funds were credited to bank accounts abroad – the payment was processed, avoiding the entry of the said sum in Argentina and generating a portion of the washing money.

Ferrari customers benefited from purchases in dollars paid at the official exchange rate (remember that the spread against the parallel dollar was above 50%). In return, Ferrari has delivered the physical dollars into the financial cave of Gastón Tomaghelli, another of the inmates, and collected a 10% commission for the service provided.

Researchers estimate that between 2012 and 2015, due to the impossibility for Argentina to buy dollars, Ferrari has also created various web platforms to rent apartments that do not have the money. did not exist. they were only designed to charge fictitious accusations.

In this way, Ferrari facilitated the illegal theft of dollars from the state coffers. Although the extent of the illegal drug trafficking activity is unknown, it is suspected that the investigated, as well as other accomplices, They operated at least from the year 2006 until around March 2018 and they moved "millions of pesos" through two financial and these hotels.

The file at the local level is in charge of the economic criminal judge Pablo Yadarola and the prosecutor Gabriela Ruiz Morales