Controversy surrounding the raid on the Carnaval streaming channel searching for Toviggino cars

The judiciary continues to search for cars believed to belong to the treasurer of the Argentine Football Association (AFA), Pablo Toviggino. One of the places he conducted raids was the garages of Carnaval, the streaming channel that operates in the shadow of Toviggino, although he denies having any ties to this channel.

Legal sources consulted by Clarion They said federal Judge Daniel Rafecas “did not raid Carnival” last week; although they realized that they had also done so when Pilar’s house, attributed to Toviggino, was searched “Two carnival-related workshops” were searched“looking for cars allegedly stolen from Pilar’s house” in response to “an anonymous complaint received by the Ministry of Security.”

And they declared that this operation was “negative” because “there was nothing there,” judicial sources assured Clarion.

The main presenters of the streaming channel of Pablo Jiménez and Guido Valeri, whose financing several sources attribute to Toviggino – which he denies – spoke out this Monday to denounce what was a raid on the garages in the Belgrano district of Buenos Aires a restriction on freedom of expression promoted by the government of Javier Milei, with the aim of ending the carnival.

“They wanted and want to close the carnival, but there will be carnival in 2026,” he announced Fabian Doman, in the last Conclave broadcast he hosted on this streaming channel Jorge Rial, Alejandro Fantino, Mauro Federico And Viviana Canosa.

“This is the worst thing about what happened in this building on Thursday night. How did this building get raided? If you tell me that this building belongs to a person accused of a crime, okay, I accept it, if it belongs to someone who is under investigation, that’s fine. But they came here without asking anyone who the owners of Carnival are. “This is very serious for Rafecas,” Doman added.

“The five of us and the 70 colleagues are victims. They want to close a source of work for us and they want to close a place for you to think,” Rial said. And he added: “Aside from all the threats from this administration, I never thought they would “pave this channel.”

The news emerged last Thursday when a La Nación+ cell phone located at the Carnaval gate discovered this robbery. But it wasn’t confirmed until these – and other – carnival organizers raised it as one of the central themes in their programs on Monday. In fact, last week another Carnival driver, Andrés Ducatenzeiler (Duka), He minimized this attack and did not give it the seriousness that the station’s chief conductors now gave it.

But this Monday everything changed. “I have been in the center for 30 years and have never experienced a raided environment,” said Alejandro Fantino. in this dialogue with Rial, Federico, Doman and Canosa.

“In streaming you are not censored, but closed. Here everything is so small and artisanal that you lose connection. I want to see how our colleagues justify a raid and the possible closure of a media company. This is difficult because I sometimes took Reliverán, but I supported the profession. In this I became corporate because They touch on something as simple as freedom of expression. If this channel falls, it will be a template for the fall of many other channels, even libertarian ones. “We are all journalists,” Fantino concluded.

Mauro Federico explained in his show Data Clave at Carnival that “the intentions are clear: Close the canal and the owner, Pablo Jiménez, gets tired and says, “I can’t get enough of it,” and sells it.”

Additionally, Federico said that Rafecas “indirectly ordered a raid on a media outlet.” And that explains it Jiménez, “my personal friend, has never denied having a personal connection with Pablo Toviggino, whom he has known for many years. What weighs on us is the suspicion that we are a pseudo-phenomenon of a big thing that is causing a lot of stir in the spheres of power that want to silence us.”

The news portal Data Clave, which has the same name as the program and which Jiménez also directs, published a note in which it pointed out that these statements by Federico came “after a raid on the station’s building” and that this “process This included the building’s garages, an adjacent private parking lot and reviewing correspondence at the checkout counterwith the premise of alleged ties between the broadcaster and the AFA’s treasurer, Pablo Toviggino, according to journalistic notes published in recent weeks.

Clarion He tried to communicate with Jiménez for this and four other articles since June, when Carnaval was launched, to ask him about this and other topics, but the director and owner – on paper – of the streaming channel always refused to respond.

It’s the in Clarion This possible connection between Toviggino has been mentioned since June last year. But last month the journalist joined Jorge Liotti, from the newspaper La Nación, which stated that Carnaval was “property of precisely Toviggino”, the news channel that leaked the audio recordings of Diego Spagnuolo “in which he reported an alleged corruption plot” in the National Disability Agency (ANDIS).

Also Carlos Pagnipresented a hypothesis on the news channel La Nación+ that coincided with that of Liotti and the journalist Maria O’Donnellin Urbana Play, among others, although Toviggino insists on denying any relationship with this streaming channel, which Justice searched last week in search of collector cars that would be his.