From the Ezeiza jail, where he is still imprisoned because he still did not pay the 450 million pesos bail, Enrique Blaksley spoke before the Federal Oral Court 4
The businessman Enrique Blaksley, who is on trial as accused of committing a billionaire scam Through his company “Hope Funds”, he said this Thursday when declaring before the Justice that he was “dynamited and publicly executed” by the media and that this prevented him from paying some of his clients, whom he “never” sought to swindle.
“It seemed that we were King Midas, as they have titled me, and suddenly he became a monster,” said the baptized “Argentine Madoff”, when he began to give an investigative statement in the trial that follows him for a multimillion-dollar fraud close to 184 million pesos, committed against more than 300 clients who invested in his company.
From the Ezeiza jail, where he is still imprisoned because he has not yet paid the bail of 450 million pesos that the Justice set for him on the 5th of this month to access the release, Blaksley spoke for the first time before the Federal Oral Court (TOF) 4 which is trying him along with 16 other defendants, several of them his relatives.
“We never stop recognizing mutuals (investment contracts). I simply could not pay them at a certain time because I was dynamited and publicly executed through journalistic means, systematically from 2013 to today“He complained from the videoconference room of the Ezeiza Federal Penitentiary Complex.
In addition, Blaksley questioned comparisons to his person with the American scammer Bernard Madoff:
“With regard to the title of Madoff I want to say that he was accused of having cheated because he was cheating with his account statements, saying that he acquired certain titles that he never acquired. He blatantly lied,” he said to differentiate himself.
In his case, on the contrary, he maintained that he always invested in specific goods and listed the Buenos Aires Design, the Hard Rock Café, the Carlos Gardel Corner or the Piazzolla brand.
“They were assets of real value. I was doing very well, not only because of people’s trust, but also doing well financially and all the people who projected with me were doing well”added.
Blaskley reviewed the origins of his business in the 90s with the Romero Victorica family, with whom he said he was linked in those ventures.
“I decided to invest in the real economyI was simply a businessman who creatively instead of requesting loans from banks, I requested loans from individuals who lent me money so that I could acquire a business, “he said.
The company “never ever tried to harm any person. My good name was my business, people trusted me, it is impossible for me not to comply,” he insisted.
Blaskley’s statement will continue on April 7, when a new hearing for the oral trial was set.
The trial that follows is for a multimillion-dollar scam close to 184 million pesos
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They confirmed the AFIP as the complainant
At the beginning of the day, the TOF 4 rejected proposals of the defenses and resolved that the debate continue with the investigative statements of the accused.
Judges Néstor Costabel, Jorge Gorini, and Ricardo Basilico dismissed claims of nullity of the requirements for elevation to trial in the case and also confirmed the AFIP as a plaintiff, by denying a request for it to be set aside.
The trial resumed with the responses of the prosecutor Abel Córdoba, the lawyer for the AFIP complaint, Cintia Vázquez, and the complaints for the private victims, to the proposals made by the defenses in the so-called “preliminary questions.”
The businessman is accused of a mega-scam through his company Hope Funds SA and is tried along with 16 other defendants as allegedly responsible for repeated scams for an amount calculated at 184 million pesos against some 300 victims, in competition with the collection of savings from the unauthorized public aggravated by having been committed by public offering ..
He is also tried for money laundering of criminal origin and illicit association.
In addition to Blaksley, his brother-in-law and administrative manager of Hope Funds, Federico Dolinkué; the person in charge of forming companies abroad, Alejandro Miguel Carozzino, and the commercial manager Verónica Vega, among others.
Who is the “Argentine Madoff”, accused of defrauding 300 people
On February 18, the trial against the businessman began Enrique Blaksley Señorans, known as the “Argentine Madoff”, and 16 other people, including some of his relatives, accused of having committed the largest scam in the history of the country through the company Hope Funds SA, which It has more than 300 affected savers, of whom they seized about 184 million pesos.
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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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. He sponsors, but he 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. That forced, for example, Blaksley to part five months ago, at the request of Hard Rock International, from the franchise that that chain has in Recoleta.
The party is over and save a few awkward pictures. Among them, a photo of Blaksley at the InterContinental hotel in Tigre with Federer, Sergio Massa and Guillermo Marín, his partner at Imagen Deportiva. Or that YouTube interview in which the group leader states that, more than profitability itself, “the ultimate goal of Hope Funds is to protect people.” Or the indelible memory of 120 vendors who were rewarded with a Baltic Sea cruise, with food and an open bar. It was August 2014, Argentina had not yet finished overcoming the devaluation of January and so much opulence led one of the travelers to weigh everything in a low voice and with a drastic conclusion, in front of his companions, they barely touched the coast of Denmark: “This falls off.”
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