Global Courant
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From the Malvinas fraud to the unforgettable transmissions of “Un sol para los niños”, a review full of anecdotes, solidarity and millionaire figures.
Nine hundred thirty-five million pesos. That is what he had collected until this Tuesday Santiago Maratea in the collection to help Independiente to clean up its badly injured treasury. That amount, beyond the fact that the trust that serves as a piggy bank has four more months to live, will be transferred to an account of the Avellaneda club reserved especially for this money and will immediately be transferred to America from Mexico.
The premise is to reduce a little more the debt contracted by the pass of the Paraguayan midfielder Cecilio Domínguez. It will be about 3.5 million dollars at the official exchange rate that will be added to the million in US currency that Independiente had already paid last week with genuine funds from the institution.
It insists. There are nine hundred and thirty-five million pesos collected in just over two months. There are 3.5 million dollars that were raised as a result of the generosity of thousands and thousands of fans. Fanatics of the Red, but also of many who folded to accompany the cause. It is an enormous amount of money, although it is still far from the ambitious initial objective of reaching the 20 million dollars necessary to leave the club’s liabilities at zero.
However. Were there other such large collections in the history of Argentina? It seems impossible. But if. This is hardly the largest in Maratea. It is worth remembering some to take dimension of the money that the influencer knew how to get.
The Malvinas fraud
Television marathon that was made in ATC, for the Malvinas War, in 1982, with the conduction of Cacho Fontana and Pinky. / Archive
The best known of all, and which ended up being a monumental fraud, was the collection for the soldiers who went to fight in the Malvinas War.
Almost all those who already have gray hair remember that telethon “Las 24 horas de las Malvinas”, which was broadcast in May 1982, in the middle of the war with the United Kingdom, by ATC and which was hosted by Pinky and Cacho Fontana. They summoned celebrities and personalities who answered phones and thus channel donations. They received food, coats and all kinds of supplies for the soldiers who had gone to fight in the South Atlantic. Money was also collected. For example, Diego Maradona donated a check for 100 million pesos Law 18,188, which at that time was equivalent to about 7 thousand dollars. At the end of the day, $22,874,769,000 Ley Pesos were collected, equivalent to 1,628 million dollars.
That money went to the Malvinas Argentinas Patriotic Fund, which between April and June accumulated some 54 million dollars. Manuel Solanet, the man who managed the finances of the war, put an end to a State secret in an investigation published by the journalist Pablo Calvo in Clarín on April 3, 2005: “The final collection in donations was 54 million dollars, almost double what the mobilization of troops for the occupation of the islands demanded, which cost 29 million dollars. However, that total would hardly have been enough to buy a Mirage plane,” recalled the man who was the Secretary of the Nation’s Treasury at that time.
Pablo Calvo’s investigation into the collection fraud for Malvinas soldiers.
And it wasn’t just cash that had been raised. Jewelry had also been donated. “The pieces were melted down into 73 ingots at the Mint. They weighed 141 kilos. Auctions were held with them at Banco Ciudad and the resulting money was deposited in the Patriotic Fund. Renato Vaschetti, an entrepreneur from Rosario’s wine industry -now deceased-, was the only one who managed to recover the three kilos of gold that he had donated. His claim before the Justice was based on “the uncertain destinations” that the donations had. In May 1984, they returned the same bars that he had delivered, with the inscription of a Swiss bank,” Calvo’s note revealed.
Nothing reached destination. At hands, nothing arrived on time at destination. It was the biggest fraud in the history of collections in Argentina. Fortunately, it has not been repeated until now.
Other recent (and millionaire) collections
The latest edition of “Un sol para los chicos”.
In September 2022, promoted by Unicef Argentina and Canal 13, the Un Sol para los Chicos campaign raised $331,250,573 in favor of children and adolescents. It was just 24 hours of donations. In dollars at the official exchange rate of the day? The account gives 2,252,792.
For its part, Cáritas Argentina reported last year that the total amount collected in its annual collection carried out on June 11 and 12, 2022 under the slogan “Your commitment shortens distances”, amounted to 340,784,996.94 pesos. The amount represented, according to a cable from the AICA agency, “a 55.86% increase compared to last year.” In dollars, at the official exchange rate at the time, it was equivalent to 2,669,891 greens.
In both cases, despite the fact that the time to collect donations was shorter, they fell short of what has been collected so far.
