The Argentine Football Association (AFA) denounced “a smear campaign” against the company and its president Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia and his treasurer, Pablo Toviggino.
In a statement, the institute defended its business relationship with TourProdenter LLC, the company that manages AFA funds in the United States.
LA NACION exclusively revealed that $42 million was transferred from the TourProdenter LLC account to shell companies. Another investigation found that nearly $500,000 was diverted from the same accounts to two companies linked to Toviggino.
The AFA of Tapia stated before publishing these data: “It must be made clear that the AFA has an ongoing contract with the company TourProdenter LLC, through which this company has been appointed as commercial agent of this association for its representation in economic and commercial matters abroad. This contractual relationship has been duly subjected to the analysis of various courts both in the Argentine Republic and in the United States, without any irregularities being found.”
In the text that the company distributed on its website, the entrepreneur is accused of being behind the publications. Guillermo Tofoni “who apparently does not accept court decisions that are unfavorable to him.”
In addition, the AFA authorities recalled that it was Tofoni who “in the framework of case CFP 1294/2023, filed a complaint with the Argentine judicial system entitled “Fraud of Tapia Claudio Fabián for violation of rights and violation of Article 303″, linked to the sponsorship and organization of friendly matches of the national team, especially those played in the People’s Republic of China.”
And they added: “In these proceedings, both the AFA and its President were dismissed on September 6, 2023, a decision confirmed in November of the same year by the Federal Criminal and Correctional Chamber (Chamber I) and subsequently by the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber in April 2024, thus definitively closing the judicial file in our country.”
In this sense, the AFA pointed out to the media: “Nevertheless and despite the force of the judgments, the file was only closed in court, but not in certain journalistic headlines, which of course were never reported or the dismissals were justified.”
And he continued his defense: “Far from accepting these statements, in recent days publications have again been disseminated which, without carrying out the minimum checks or appropriate investigations, speak of alleged irregularities in the management of AFA funds abroad, particularly in the United States. These statements, presented as “investigations”, have, strictly speaking, a SINGLE source: old judicial representations promoted by Mr. Guillermo Tofoni and later replicated in various international environments were. of the repeated errors made in court, recycled again and again, now amplified by some media without further analysis.
The institution emphasized later in the statement that the existing commercial relationship between the AFA and TourProdenter LLC is “properly aligned with the law” following an alleged analysis by the Argentine and North American judicial systems. In this sense he defined the contractual relationship as “valid, transparent and are subject to the appropriate judicial controls, even for those who prefer to ignore them.”
The Argentine Football Federation concluded its statement with a message to the national press in which it stressed the importance of “verifying judicial decisions in addition to sources” and stressed that “responsibility for truthful reporting implies not contributing to operations that serve special interests.”
“Society deserves to receive serious, responsible and verified information” and to trust that “operations, on the other hand, tend to come to light on their own over time,” he concluded.
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