The Airport Security Police (PSA) had to break down the door. No one answered Of 9 Soccer, the company of former Uruguayan player and representative Uriel Pérez Jaurena. Only a while later his lawyer, Eduardo Alberto Martins, appeared on the 9th floor of Avenida del Libertador 650, Vicente López. The simultaneous operation with five others in the AFA and the Racing, Independiente, Gimnasia and Esgrima La Plata and Unión clubs yielded a disturbing result. In addition to the seized documentation, a pistol 9 millimeters with two projectiles on a desk and without the papers in order. The day after the raid, the owner of the office traveled to the United States with his family. The federal prosecutor of San Isidro Rodolfo Fernando Domínguez accuses him of tax evasion and money laundering. The judicial investigation is advancing on alleged crimes committed in four countries: Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay and Brazil. “We are putting the puzzle together with all the parts scattered around and it will depend a lot on what we find in the computers,” he told Page 12 a source that closely follows the subject. Leaders and soccer players were also implicated in the case entitled “NN s / violation of law 24769 and article 303”. The process could become a before and after that exposes the opacity of a market where few earn at the expense of many. And when they win, they get rich in no time.
Pérez Jaurena is a 45-year-old former striker. Itinerant, he played for clubs in Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Bolivia and Argentina (Colón and Belgrano, among others). When he left his career he dedicated himself to representing footballers and some isolated coach. The vast majority are Argentines and among the best known are Enzo Fernández de River, Federico Mancuello de Vélez, Domingo Blanco and Andrés Roa from Independiente and Gabriel Ávalos from Argentinos Juniors.
Means of Mexico and our country relate it commercially with Christian bragarnik. But the only data that is repeated is that the two would have teamed up to manage the professional staff of Ferro where the owner of the Spanish Elche club invested money. TO Perez Jaurena credited with controlling the sportswear company Sport Lyon that you saw the team, in addition to Defense and Justice and Arsenal in First Division. But according to the board of directors of that textile company updated until 2019 that this medium obtained in the IGJ, its president is Norberto José Arcolino and as alternate director is Víctor Antonio Contreras. There are no traces of the former player.
A report by Mexican journalist Amir Ibrahim, director of ElQuintanaRoo.mx entitled The cartel of the goal and published on January 11 of this year, links the Uruguayan representative with a character with a dark background in Mexico: the American Greg Taylor. Another businessman who manages soccer players and influential coaches in that market. “When we talk about a ‘cartel’ In this report, we do it to exemplify and we do not refer to a drug as it is commonly known, but to a perfectly well structured organization, with leaders and operators meeting for the same purpose: obtain the greatest amount of profit possible and unclear, although this is more than dirty, amoral and in many cases even illegal; in addition to fighting hard against its competition ”.
Taylor would have traveled to Argentina twice from Mexico, which does not prove anything, but it would place him in the crosshairs of the prosecutor Domínguez and Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado who ordered the raid on Vicente López’s modern glazed building with gym and pool. The North American has been one of the owners of the Gallos Blancos de Querétaro, a First Division club, since last year. He also owned the Atlante.
Just as Ibrahim based his research on Taylor and the people around him in his businesses, another Mexican journalist, Ignacio Suárez from the Récord site, wrote a lengthy article titled Obscene business last Wednesday where he points out that in the judicial operations of September 29 carried out in Buenos Aires “in all cases a player representative was indirectly or directly involved, his name: Uriel Pérez Jaurena.” Much of the evidence must be found in the statement released by the AFA on the raid on its headquarters a week ago. He was required to provide information on footballers who played or are playing in Mexico where each team can put nine foreigners in its starting lineup today. An amount that will gradually drop to seven in the 2022-2023 season. Gerardo Martino, the coach of the local team, complained a lot about this foreign invasion that fuels the businesses of representatives like Pérez Jaurena.
The AFA says that they kidnapped “copies of the transfer contracts of the athletes Maximiliano Meza, Federico Mancuello, Emmanuel Gigliotti, Nicolás Sánchez, Jesús Méndez, Fernando Barrientos, Jonatan Maidana and Enrique Triverio; registration of representatives of said athletes; certificates of deposits made under the terms of article 214 of the general regulation of AFA; record of transfers abroad of said players during the years 2014/19 where the value of each operation is indicated; any documentary record that proves that Uriel Pérez Jaurena exercises ownership of the economic rights of soccer players and all other documentation that is of interest to clarify the denounced maneuvers ”.
In the request of the prosecution, the players are charged with “Tax evasion and money laundering”; for the same crimes plus that of “Fraudulent administration” the leaders of the four clubs and the AFA that participated in the transfers; Pérez Jaurena, as previously reported, and “other people who fulfilled the role of representative of the soccer players mentioned above, and any other person who may have intervened, provided collaboration or covered up the facts.”
The case was opened by an anonymous complaint that Procelac received, which also carried out its own investigation. Suárez published in his note – the first installment of a series that will continue – how the amount of illicitly obtained profits would amount to “24 million 750 thousand dollars, only during the period from 2014 to 2019”. The same journalist agrees with the sources consulted by Page 12 on the compromised situation of Pérez Jaurena before the Argentine Justice that continues to gather evidence to summon him to the investigation. Some are the names of the companies registered in Panama related to the Uruguayan representative such as Inti Holding LLP, UP Sport Group LLP, MM&A Profesional Servicies International LLC and Playmaker Sports Management SA of its partner Pedro Aldave Ortúzar, of Paraguayan-Argentine nationality.
The plot is complex but the judicial investigation is progressing. From the seized documentation it appears that player transfers were made for amounts less than those declared and there was galloping evasion. The former striker who started at Hurricane Buceo in Montevideo and likes to smoke cigars is just one piece of the puzzle, researchers believe. Now they want to aim higher.
gveiga@pagina12.com.ar
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