Global Courant
The gang “Los Monos” added a new judicial setback after the Justice confirmed the prosecution for money laundering for two sisters of its leader Ariel “Guille” Cantero who is serving a sentence in the Ezeiza federal prison for eight sentences that add up to sentences for 100 years. A close friend of trade unionist Marcelo Balcedo was also involved in the money laundering case.
The Chamber of Cassation endorsed a resolution of the Federal Court of Appeals of Rosario, which had revoked the decision of the first instance judge, Marcelo Bailaque, for which he found Macarena Anabela Cantero and Yoana Noemí Cantero lacking merit for the crime of money laundering of assets, according to judicial sources informed Télam.
The case began in 2015 due to a complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Crime and Money Laundering (Procelac) and the Rosario Federal Prosecutor’s Office 3 for alleged money laundering by the drug gang “Los Monos”.
According to a report from the Financial Information Unit (UIF), which is a complainant in the file, Macarena Cantero “acquired a motorcycle on April 28, 2017, for an amount of $88,500 (according to the invoice value reported by the AFIP), unknown the way in which he would have bought it, since he was not enrolled in any activity, nor was the position of his initial patrimony known”.
“Guille’s” sister received the Universal Child Allowance for the periods February to June 2018, for $6,362.80,” according to the same report.
While in 2012, Yoana Cantero bought a Ford Fiesta Kinetic “for an amount of $94,500, an action that would have occurred with unknown funds, since no income was recorded in said period, nor from other sources.”
The woman was registered as a monotributista since November 2016 in various commercial activities -sale of clothing, beverages and food-, and showed a progression in the categories, going from B in November 2016 (with maximum annual income of up to $48,000). to D in February 2019 (with income up to $414,383), depending on the cause.
Four years after the complaint, on May 6, 2019, Judge Bailaque prosecuted “Guille” Cantero, his father Ariel aka “Viejo” and six other people for money laundering, and seized the first for 10 million pesos.
Also prosecuted were “Guille’s” partner, Vanesa Barrios, who in 2015 owned five cars and had previously owned two others and had driving licenses for three more, and lots in Granadero Baigorria; and Silvana Gorosito, partner of the other boss of “Los Monos”, Ramón Machuca, known as “Monchi Cantero”.
For Justice, “Los Monos” carried out a “set of operations tending to recycle their earnings, through the people investigated.”
And it highlights that “the maneuvers carried out in each case exceeded the profits or income that the subjects involved could have produced with their economic activities, which would indicate that they were the result of the preceding crimes”, the drug trade.
However, Judge Bailaque issued a lack of merit for the sisters Yoana and Macarena Cantero, who were later prosecuted by the Federal Chamber of Rosario and now confirmed by Chamber III of the Chamber of Cassation made up of judges Juan Carlos Gemignani, Mariano Hernán Borinsky and Daniel Antonio Petrone.
“Guille” Cantero is also charged
A part of the case, the one involving “Guille” Cantero and other defendants, has already been brought to trial, although it does not yet have a start date, a judicial source told Télam.
“The assets have already been confiscated by the provincial courts,” added the spokesperson, adding that it is a more or less typical case of the use of front men for the registration of assets, who cannot demonstrate patrimonial capacity to justify them.
But the former general secretary of the Union of Workers and Employees of Minority and Education in Buenos Aires (Soeme) Marcelo Antonio Balcedo, and a representative of that union named Mauricio Yebra, were also involved in the case.
Balcedo was sentenced in an abbreviated trial in Uruguay for money laundering, arms trafficking and smuggling.
According to the investigation carried out by the UIF, his collaborator Yebra had 14 vehicles in his name that were in the hands of members of the “Los Monos” gang through blue cards or use permits.
The AFIP warned at the time that the Soeme deposited 53,532,221 pesos since the end of 2012 and for a year in a Columbia bank account.
It was done through checks that were endorsed in the name of Yebra, who withdrew the money over the counter.
Investigators presume that part of that money could have gone to Balcedo’s journalistic ventures in the city of La Plata, and another part to the acquisition of vehicles used by members of the “Los Monos” gang.
Part of these questions will begin to dissipate when the oral trial for laundering of a part of the case started in 2015 begins.
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MG
