Enrique Blaksley is imprisoned in Ezeiza and is going through a trial in Comodoro Py for an estimated damage of at least $ 1,500 million pesos for various crimes
The Financial Information Unit (UIF) imposed a fine in excess of $ 8 million on Enrique Blaksley Señorans and his company Hope Funds SA, investigated for committing one of the largest financial scams in Argentine history.
The so-called “Argentine Madoff”, in reference to the late financier who died this week convicted of the largest Ponzi scheme committed in the United States, is currently being tried in Federal Oral Court No. 4 along with 16 other defendants, including close relatives and historical collaborators. of your signature.
He is accused of more than 300 alleged deceptions by raising funds from savers for various real estate or commercial ventures and for alleged money laundering, with files initiated in 2015.
The FIU sanctioned Hope Funds and Blaksley Señorans for not complying with special regulations that these types of companies must abide by to prevent crimes such as money laundering, corruption, terrorist financing, fraud, tax evasion and other complex economic crimes. .
The Blaksley Señorans story
On the morning of Saturday, November 26, 2016, Enrique Blaksley, 55, the eldest son of a family of 14 siblings raised a few meters from San Isidro Cathedral and founder of Hope Funds, received his second public threat in seven days. : a funeral notice from the Clarín newspaper gave him up for dead and greeted his family and partners “at this difficult time.”
Former three quarters of the University Club of Buenos Aires (CUBA) and with no other academic training than passing through high school at the El Salvador schoolBlaksley embarked on this business in 1989, when he realized that the many account executives who reported to him at the insurance company where he worked could also sell other types of financial products.
Blacksley brought various athletes to the country, including Roger Federer
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The operative
Hope Funds is what the financial market knows as private equity funds, ventures that, outside of state regulation but without crossing the border of the law, They offer savers rates that are impossible to reach in the formal circuit.
Blaksley’s, for example, came to pay between 7 and 12% per year in dollars, two points above what the informal market of the caves paid. The measure that surely contributed to many of the Hope Funds believers finally deciding to withdraw their bets was money laundering promoted by the Government. It has been known since the crash of ’29: nobody resists a run.
The case is resounding because it involves artists, people from the world of polo and entertainment, relatives of the owner of the group and executives of first-rate companies.
As soon as the case became known to the public opinion, those who know about finances said that it was most likely that it was a case dominated by decisions made with a high degree of irresponsibility, infinite ambition and little experience in private banking.
Blaksley did not know, could not or did not want to assess the risks of a business that, although it started well, ended up getting out of hand. Typical “mismatch” issues: Hope Funds made investments for several years with a savings funding, most of which did not exceed the one-year term. It was what this rate allowed, set in dollars for the 12 months at 7% per year, a yield that grew gradually to 12% for the six years, the maximum term.
Once it bursts, the financial bubble takes with it all the fiction it was able to create.
Blaksley was a prestigious investor and highly sought after in the world of sports.
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Which celebrities did you associate with?
Blaksley was a prestigious investor, with 25 years of experience in the sector and one of the most sought-after entrepreneurs in the world of sports. He brought Roger Federer to an exhibition with Juan Martin del Potro, a Usaín Bolt to run against the Metrobus, organized the farewell of Ariel ortega In River, he faced an unfinished project that aimed to open cafes with the Messi brand and won the Triple Crown as the main sponsor of La Dolfina. In 2013, before the cameras of TyC Sports, Adolfo Cambiaso (h), with whom he is in a fight today, praised him, distinguishing him from the cold common sponsors: “When you have a friendship, everything becomes easier: from going out to eat, from playing polo, from sharing the same things. sponsors, but lives in Russia and the truth is that it is not the same feeling “.
The failure of his business had real reasons. The most relevant was the investigation of Carlos Gonella, former head of the Office of the Attorney for Economic Crime and Money Laundering, which determined in mid-2014 that, out of 521 investors in the group, only three could explain the origin of the funds.
Three years earlier, on February 11, 2011, with a great party at the Sheraton in Pilar, Hope Funds had inaugurated Verazul, its most important business venture, a gated community nestled in Villa Rosa, on the banks of the Luján River. But the initiative was later frustrated with a complaint from environmentalists. And that was the beginning of the end: the presentation led the government of Humberto Zuccaro, then mayor of Pilar, to withdraw from Hope Funds the precarious permit to build, the work was stopped and, with it, the payment of customer fees that began to worry about delays.
The publication of the first setbacks in January 2015, just on Blaksley’s 50th birthday, is according to Hope Funds the third reason for the debacle. Until then the group had continued to function with a aggressive policy to incorporate vendors to its commercial force, reinforced with commissions in dollars that reached 7%, trips and prizes for the most successful.
Some years ago, the group focused on set up offshore companies for u $ s10 million in the British Virgin Islands, armed by the Mossack Fonseca study, something that close to the businessman now deny.
“He is not a bad guy: he showed his face, continues working and was always at the disposal of the Justice,” they added in his environment. “El Negro stepped on the shoulder and went to the grass,” retrucaba one who worked with him. What no one doubts is that the business was a fiasco.
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