It’s the beginning of the end for Tapiasays a football leader who is no friend of the AFA president but visits him frequently. He was referring to the scandalous show they gave yesterday more than 30 procedures for the raid the headquarters of Argentine football and home to several clubs. Strictly speaking, Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia He is suspected of the financial network that surrounds his entourage: mainly the treasurer of the AFA and Tapia’s right-hand man, Pablo Tovigginoand to the financier Ariel Vallejothe visible face of Sur Finanzas, a financial company that acted as an advertiser and lender to premier league clubs.
“The interest charged by Sur Finanzas was very expensive, but it came from Tapia. My club did not accept the loan, but perhaps I would have accepted it if the interest had been cheaper,” admitted the president of another important club. This club could say no, but others did hostages from Vallejo and therefore from Tapia himself. “We were stuck between Tapia and Vallejo,” admits a leader of a club that accepted a loan from Vallejo.
However, the worst thing that has happened to Tapia recently is this The referees lost the respect of the fans And no one knows anymore whether the results of the games are real or whether, on the contrary, they were manipulated. To make matters worse, Tapia himself created an award and championship that are not listed in the AFA bylaws. It was the device that exploded publicly, even though there was a less visible conflict beforehand. This scandal over a trophy that did not exist ended with the public protest of the Estudiantes players who, at the start of a game, turned their backs on the supposed winner of this made-up tournament, Rosario Central. A disciplinary tribunal then imposed harsh sanctions on the president of Estudiantes. Juan Sebastian Veronto the club and its players. The scandal did not end because Verón announced that he would appeal the AFA’s decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an independent body based in Switzerland.
The first conclusion is that the solution to the monumental conflict experienced by Argentine football, its main organization (the AFA) and its president Tapia cannot lie in the country’s most popular sport. The solution must come from politics, but politics has its own limits Because the government cannot get its hands on the AFA without risking Argentine football being separated from FIFA, the world body that governs football, just months before the next World Cup, which will take place between June and July next year in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Argentine team will come to this tournament as world champions of the last competition.
One of the unfortunate aspects of the conflict between the AFA and its president is that they are the visible face of a team of notable players, including the one considered the best player in the world. Lionel Messi. The players are completely unaware of the crisis in the Argentine football headquarters. Rather, the opposite is happening: the local football leaders, starting with Tapia, have become rich and committed their crimes by taking the worst possible advantage of the talent of the athletes who won the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
So far, no national player has publicly commented on the conflict between the AFA and Tapia. They’re fine. In reality, the lawyer is the only public defender of Tapia and his influential treasurer Toviggino Gregorio Dalbonwho is also one of the lawyers who defends in court Cristina Kirchner. Dalbón threatened journalists on his The journalism that followed the case simply repeated the version according to which a Mansion in Pilarwith old cars, farms and a helipad, would be connected to Tapia and Toviggino. Even the citizens’ coalition, with the signature of, among others Elisa Carrio, He called on the Justice Department to open an investigation into this massive estate, its alleged owners and its possible front men.
Both Tapia and Toviggino are harassed by the dealings of financier Vallejo and his financial firm. South Financea company that began transacting billions of pesos with AFA clubs. Previously, it had started as a small financial company with an office and nothing else. The DGI called for several cases to be investigated Monotributists with accounts containing money that would belong to other owners, the real ones. The tax authority also requested that an investigation be opened against Ariel Vallejo’s family because he may have deposited money and property in the names of his relatives. Sur Finanzas used to donate to first division clubs on the condition that they put up a memorial plaque for the donor in a conspicuous place. Some important clubs such as Independiente refused to put up the plaque because they simply did not receive all the promised funds as donations. This level of fraud and deception was achieved around Tapia.
Julio Grondona did worse things, but he knew how to hide them from public scrutiny. There is an anecdote known in football. It happened when Mauricio Macri He was president of Boca and had already proposed converting the clubs into public companies. He brought the idea to Grondona and accepted it on the condition that it was approved by the AFA Executive Committee. Macri agreed with the belief that an idea from Grondona would never be rejected by a committee dependent on the leader of Argentine football at the time. In the final vote, only Macri and Grondona themselves voted for the idea; The rest of the board voted against it and the project was therefore rejected. “See, Mauricio? The clubs don’t like your idea,” concluded Grondona, not without hypocrisy. Macri left with the certainty that whoever was president of the AFA had first convinced the members of the executive committee to vote against it, while Grondona reserved the only yes vote in addition to Macri’s predictable vote. Much later, Grondona eventually handed over the football television business to the Kirchners when they were in government. A political favor of colossal magnitude; At that time, Grondona could not hide its complicity or partnership with the ruling power.
Now it’s not just about the amounts of money being moved in Tapia, but also about the attitudes, statements and decisions that are seriously arbitrary within the framework of football rules. Football officials recalled that recently a referee, who had been seriously questioned on the pitch for not awarding a penalty, went into the dressing room at the end of the match (which the club affected by that decision won) and insulted the players for protesting against his decision to award a penalty. “It has never happened before that a referee treats players like this, especially when they had just won a game on the hour mark and after an unfair decision by the referee himself,” said a football leader who witnessed the sad spectacle.
The investigation against Tapia already has four judges: federal judges Luis Armella, Federico Villena and Daniel Rafecas and the commercial criminal judge Javier Lopez Biscayart. Rafecas asked the Federal Chamber to decide whether the money laundering and illicit enrichment case remains in his hands or in those of López Biscayart. The prosecutor’s office is investigating whether Ariel Vallejo, the owner of Sur Finanzas, was really an advisor to Sur Finanzas Sergio Massa in the Chamber of Deputies, because if he were a civil servant he could be convicted for this illicit enrichment. There is no doubt about Tapia’s status as an official since he is president of the Ceamsethe authority responsible for waste management in the metropolitan region. He has just returned to the position promoted by his new political godfather, the governor Axel Kicillof. Tapia could be convicted of illicit enrichment.
According to AFA leaders, who asked that their names be withheld, there are three football headquarters leaders who have become enormously rich: Tapia, Toviggino (who travels in his own private plane) and Luciano NakisPro-secretary of the AFA who became famous for wiping Tapia’s sweaty neck in Qatar. Nakis aspires to become president of the Independiente club. According to the same voices, it will be very difficult for Tapia to take over the leadership of the AFA when the next World Cup begins. “It’s not coming,” surely predicts a politician involved in football management. In this case, it is because the judiciary resolved the conflict in the leadership of the AFA, not in politics or the leaders of this sport.
At the same time, it happens that no one sees a football leader on the horizon who would be able to take over the leadership of the AFA, and this is preventing football from solving its own problems. Such considerations lead to the conclusion that Chiqui Tapia, former son-in-law of the Incombustible Hugo Moyanolives the beginning of your own end as head of administration for the country’s most popular sport. “We cannot reach the World Cup as world champions and at the same time with a leader who is being prosecuted by multiple judges,” says a senior member of the AFA. Tapia’s problem is that he is constantly left alone.
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