The National Prosecutor for Economic Crime and Money Laundering (Procelac) took a complaint and entrusted a federal prosecutor from Rosario to investigate it. The magnifying glass falls on an organization that advertised its illegal business in a classified ad in the newspaper The capital: he lent money at an usury rate in exchange for a mortgage guarantee and behind a downtown real estate agency as a screen; then he rejected any arrangement in order to foreclose on the mortgage and order the same properties stolen from the debtors to be bought in simulated auctions and at a vile price. Those who granted the loans were “straw men” who never knew the debtors. And those who bought the real estate at auction belong to the same circle of people.
The maneuver was reiterated dozens of times using the civil courts of Rosario as an execution lever. When one of the victims took the case to the Prosecutor’s Office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office refused to take the complaint. The reason is the criminal policy of the MPA today in charge of Jorge Baclini: the decision of which crimes to investigate and which not. Where he did make foot is in the federal jurisdiction. In 10 days, 34 people who fell into the trap will testify as witnesses. Federal judge Marcelo Bailaque has just extended for another 30 days the declaration of “disputed assets” on the real estate that the denounced organization executed as a mortgage on the loans.
The lawyer Micaela Domínguez, when going to the Attorney General’s Office, explained that the objective of this organization is “to keep the property of the debtors, thus laundering colossal sums of money in pesos and dollars in the face of the undaunted actions of Justice that allows, without major obstacles, not only to achieve its objectives, but also ends up being functional to them”.
The pot was uncovered five years ago, when the scandal overflowed the civil and commercial jurisdiction and jumped to the criminal court due to the complaint filed by a man who in 2016 took a loan to help a son-in-law in financial trouble, and ended up losing his house in a auction, without the possibility of the creditor party’s lawyer accepting any kind of out-of-court settlement. And it turned out that the same lawyer was the one who ended up buying the mortgaged property, with the help of a notary public and an auctioneer also involved in the presentation before Procelac.
The complainant, FD, said that in that year he went to “an advertisement in the newspaper of a real estate agency that offered mortgage loans.” That already implies a suspicion of illegality. Only entities authorized by the Central Bank can lend money with a mortgage guarantee. “Mortgage loans, immediate resolution. Experience, seriousness. Consult Italia 1231” said the ad.
FD went there, where he found the office of Inmobiliaria Solares. He thus mortgaged his house “in favor of a person we do not know.” It turned out that the loan was not even granted by the real estate company but by a third person who never appeared on the scene.
FD’s lawyer, Micaela Domínguez, would later confirm that this maneuver was repeated on each occasion, always with people who were unaware that loans were being made with their name. It was even discovered that the people whose name was invoked did not have the financial solvency to make these monetary loans.
Later, in the mutual contract that they signed, the DNI of the person creditor of the mortgage was tampered with, so as to make it difficult to identify them later. This and other repeated irregularities in the constitution of the mortgages are recorded in the complaint. For this reason, the original complaint refers to the crimes of “material and ideological falsehood of a public instrument (deeds)”, in addition to “usury, fraud and/or illicit association, and/or money laundering”.
In most of the foreclosures scattered in the civil jurisdiction of Rosario, the lawyer representing each creditor is the same.
“They are loans of black money for which they use ideologically false deeds because borrower and borrower do not know each other, therefore, it is fallacious that they have agreed to any loan,” said the lawyer.
“It was never my intention not to pay. For a loan of 200,000 pesos they demanded 1,500,000 pesos from us. Faced with those impossible amounts that they required us to pay, we clearly warned that the intention was to keep our property by carrying out the foreclosure,” he stated. The complainant.
“The mortgage is planned to be unpayable, with terms that do not exceed 12 months, at very high interest (…) laundering maneuvers that use the Court (…) Those who are behind it are the same ones who acquire the property, to then legally re-enter the market through the denounced real estate agency, after the auction purchase (…) While they asked us for 1,500,000 pesos to cancel the debt, we warned that our property will be auctioned for a amount that does not reach 500,000 pesos. That is, it goes to auction for a negligible value that facilitates the purchase maneuver described,” the complaint summarized.
straw men
In another case, a woman took out a loan of 400,000 pesos in 2017 to save her furniture store in the Bella Vista neighborhood. She went with her mother to the real estate agency but the mutual contract was made in favor of a stranger. “In the deed it was falsely stated that they gave me 484,000 pesos and stipulated an interest of 0.2% daily per day of delay. The stipulated interest had to be paid in 12 monthly installments of 24,200 pesos,” denounced the woman in documentation to which had access Rosario/12. “The payment receipts were delivered by the real estate company without a letterhead or tax registration data or any other sign of legality. They gave us a provisional receipt that they later exchanged for another supposedly signed by MF (the unknown lender). On each receipt the signature was different They always denied us the ability to meet Mr. F.” added the victim.
When he found out by another means the address of the person who had supposedly lent him, he found that said person no longer lived there and his son had not known his whereabouts for a long time. “It’s hard for him to lend money given his humble condition,” the man told him about his father. When consulting Afip, it turned out that he had been discharged and declared an “unreliable taxpayer.”
let another investigate
The complaint bounced in the provincial Justice. The Public Prosecutor’s Office dismissed FD’s presentation despite the evidence provided that loans were issued illegally, mortgages were constituted with irregularities, and any solution attempt was rejected in order to finally execute the guarantees. And that, repeated in several cases with the same pattern.
Attorney Domínguez found at least 34 similar situations in the civil and commercial courts. Where even the judge validated the foreclosures and the deeds of the mortgages despite the fact that the documentation had anomalies. “A judge allowed the purchase without the corresponding power, without accrediting the basis in the auction, without demanding tax payments before the Afip. And so in numerous cases,” the lawyer observed in this newspaper.
All in all, the fiscal response was negative, and last December the MPA ratified that rejection in a document signed by Attorney General Jorge Baclini. The decision not to accept the complaint for usury obeys -consulted lawyers pointed out- to a criterion of the criminal policy with which the MPA is conducted. In summary, prosecutors generally dismiss them given the probability that the complainant willfully use a criminal complaint to stop a foreclosure or embargo that is processed in the civil jurisdiction. Therefore, the provincial Justice dismissed and filed this complaint as usury or fraud, and referred it to federal jurisdiction.
procelac yes
The case made its way to Procelac. Micaela Domínguez filed a complaint with the national organization that prosecutes money laundering, which took it and entrusted the federal Justice with the opening of an investigation that is now being promoted by federal prosecutor No. 3 of Rosario, Adriana Saccone.
In turn, Judge Marcelo Bailaque issued a precautionary measure that paralyzed two of those foreclosures. And although FD’s house was already auctioned and acquired by the same lawyer as always (his name is reserved for now as there is no criminal charge), said property was declared as “litigious property.”
On March 22, the magistrate issued another measure for 30 days so that these two foreclosed properties continue to maintain that status and, therefore, cannot be resold in the real estate market. He also banned the publication of the classified ad that lured those in need of quick money.
Saccone cited for Wednesday 12 to 34 people who are intimidated in the civil jurisdiction as debtors of these usurious credits. They will testify in federal jurisdiction as witnesses for the prosecutor’s investigation.
A source close to the case regretted that the provincial prosecutor’s office refused to investigate usury, and doubted the possibility of proving the existence of money laundering in this case in the federal jurisdiction. “That these maneuvers occurred has been proven. Morally, it is reprehensible; in criminal matters, the MPA said that there is no crime; and in the federal prison, it is being investigated…”, he said.
However, Procelac upheld the complaint from the lawyer Micaela Domínguez: “Someone who is not the one who appears on the papers lends 200,000 pesos and ends up keeping a property valued at several million: that is money laundering because none of those loans They are declared before Afip and, at least, come from the crime of tax evasion and unauthorized financial intermediation, at least”.
