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The five most shocking videos of the squeeze of "La Liga", the mafia of real estate auctions

2020-06-21T05:16:11.937Z


A team of prosecutors managed to arrest the three leaders of the organization. The images show his effective modus operandi. The unfortunate role of the auctioneers.


Virginia Messi

06/20/2020 - 13:52

  • Clarín.com
  • Police

A woman who went to an auction with her husband and ended up threatened, harassed and almost unable to get into her car when it was all over; an auction that the mafia was guaranteed by preventing potential competitors from entering the room; two brothers who were squeezed so hard at the auction that they ended up buying the property from those who had intimidated them in the midst of a bid; a shouting fight between the heads of the organization that not even the Police could stop; an unsuspecting interested party who almost without realizing himself was surrounded by five thugs without the hammer being aware of it.

These are just five of the 510 stories that the Technical Assistance Instruction Corps (CATI) of the Attorney General of Mar del Plata analyzed when they were presented with an enormous challenge: to determine with evidence whether the so-called "League" existed in real estate auctions of Buyers ", a gangster cuckoo that everyone talked about and no one provided data.

The team led by prosecutor Javier Pettigiani took 70 testimonies, analyzed hundreds of auctions registered between January 2013 and March 2018 and reviewed the videos of those auctions one by one. The images are as eloquent as the very complete 300-page report that led to the arrest of the three leaders of "La Liga" in Mar del Plata just a few days ago.

Clarín exclusively accessed the videos of five of the auctions investigated in Mar del Plata. A phenomenon that is known to occur throughout the country with the greatest impunity.


1) A married couple in trouble.  June 17, 2014. Auction of a department located on Avenida Colón y Güemes with a base of 43,612 pesos and a debt of 137,820 pesos.

Susana Ruiz, a real estate producer and her husband, Héctor Fontana, went to the auction after learning of an edict published in the newspaper. The room was full and at one point they decided to bid on the department. It was then that they began to surround them. "I am a very fighter and I always defended myself, it is my personality. But it also happens to me that I do not measure the consequences. When I see that they were talking to us from all sides, Héctor was threatened by another man who sits next to him and I saw his face, I was scared . I feared for our children. I have a business on the street, we are easy to identify, "Susana said when she was called by prosecutors to testify.

Susana gave up on continuing to bid but even then the ordeal ended. When they left, they offered him the apartment $ 20,000 more expensive than what had been auctioned moments before. "It is that we are many to distribute," they explained. They hardly let them leave the place. "On leaving I found them leaning against my car waiting for me in a very stressful situation. It was very shocking what happened to us," Susana recalled. "I already knew about 'La Liga' and that they do business, that they do not allow anyone to participate and if you want to buy you have to negotiate with them," he closed.

2) Empty room and false record.  February 13, 2013. Base 665,062. Auction of a rural property of 29 hectares in the party of General Alvarado.

In this case "La Liga" used another modality: people posted outside the room and prevented the legitimate interested parties from accessing it. In the video it is seen that there are only 5 people (one of the bosses and relatives) while in the minutes there are 15.

Everything was so crude that the capo offered 666,000 pesos (just 938 pesos on the basis) and did so before the auctioneer finished offering it. It took the field in seconds. "There were certain irregularities that always occur, which are public knowledge (...). They did not allow anyone to enter the courtroom , they buy the auctioneer aware of this anomaly," said an anonymous man who came to court a few days after. Finally, the auction was canceled because it was confirmed that the buyer - who he claimed to represent the boss of "La Liga" - had not been present in the room.

3) The reselling business. June 12, 2015. Auction of a 42 m2 apartment. on Lamadrid street at 2400 on a basis of 30,412 pesos.

The victims were two brothers, Pablo and Sebastián Oto. When they made an offer on the department at auction, the "heavy" of the mafia came upon them and canceled them. "I remember that my brother was bidding and the tightening started and that a man approaching us from the left who started to bitch at us, who told us that we were shitting his business," Sebastian declared as a witness.

How did it end? "My brother stopped bidding and everyone started to get up and motioned for us to follow them. And when we go down the hall in the center of the room, after the auction is over, this bald man comes up to us who, in a very good way, talks to us and it ends by indicating how the situation continues and my brother I think the department ended up buying it. We had gone to buy in good faith and the whole situation took us by surprise ", Sebastian Oto completed.

The resale was done in the cafe across the street: "La Liga" bought the apartment for 256,000 pesos and resold it in five minutes for 400,000.

4) All against all.  October 23, 2013. Auction of a garage with base 50,000 pesos.

In this case the victim, Guillermo Celiberti (who defined himself as "The King of the garages"), made the judicial complaint a few days after the auction and in it he was intimidated in the auction room. "A man told me 'don't buy, you can't buy, we are going to meet outside,'" said Celiberti, who gave many details of what happened. Despite this, the case was closed on December 12, 2014 "for lack of supporting evidence."

When CATI prosecutors saw the video of the garage auction, they not only noticed the pressor's squeeze but also a game of bids between gang members (an acting act) that ended up yelling at each other in the room without the hammer doing anything. Such was the lack of control that everyone stopped and left and no one signed the purchase ticket.

5) "The Lord was confused" . December 12, 2016. Auction of a property (warehouse and two houses) on the street October 12 to 8400, in Bosque Alegre neighborhood. Initial base: 244,624 pesos.

In this case there were no complaints and nobody wanted to testify against "La Liga". But the images speak for themselves: a bidder takes the property for just 250,000 pesos (about $ 15,000 at the time the auction occurred) when its market value was $ 400,000. And not only that: so that the maneuver could be carried out, an entire gang squeezed in the middle of the room a second interested party who had innocently raised his hand to make a winning offer of 300,000 pesos.

Everything was scandalous, even the role of the hammer who pretended to be distracted by what was happening before his eyes and continued when the gang surrounding the second interested party looked at him and said "the man was confused." The hammer then lowered the hammer to the offer of the band member but with an incredible addition: he gave it up for a gain of 250,000 pesos when the offer had been higher, 251,000 pesos.

GL

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2020-06-21

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