05/06/2021 3:55 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 05/06/2021 3:55 PM
The businessman Enrique Blaksley, accused of committing the biggest fraud in Argentine history, affirmed before the court that judges him that "never in his life" did he imagine defrauding his clients.
He did so this Thursday, in a statement in which he
sought to improve
the situation of the rest of the defendants, some of them his relatives, by assuming that he was the owner of all the shares of the Hope Funds company.
Blaksley was dubbed the "Argentine Madoff" in reference to Bernie Madoff, the financial advisor who died this year, convicted of defrauding hundreds of clients and causing a hole of more than 65,000 million dollars.
Enrique Blaksley was a recognized businessman in the world of polo, a sport he practiced.
Photo Federico López Caro
The businessman made his investigation by videoconference from the Ezeiza prison, where he is still detained because he has not yet paid the bail established by the justice to obtain house arrest.
In his statement, Blaksley maintained that the crisis of his company began with the questioning of his real estate development "Verazul", in Nordelta, until it was "destroyed".
In this way, Blaskley continued with his investigative statement in the trial that follows before the Federal Oral Court (TOF) 4 and during the day answered questions from the lawyers of other defendants and the prosecution.
The businessman did not hesitate to answer "I" when asked who was "the true owner of one hundred percent of the shares" of Hope Funds, the company through which the alleged scam was carried out.
The arrest of the "Argentine Madoff"
"Never in my life have I imagined a scam to clients," he also said in the hearing attended by Zoom from Ezeiza jail.
The businessman maintained that many of the courts together with him, including a sister, had
"a purely administrative activity"
and that the decisions "regarding the silver, what to buy and the mechanics of the mutual ones" were taken between him and the " 'brandmanagers' of the commercial structure, Joaquín Romero Victorica, Jaime Bullrich and Juan Quevedo ".
"The clerks who are here (accused with him) were all employees or not even. One was a gym teacher who I did a favor to give him one more job and he ended up in trouble," Blaskley said.
"All I did was try to defend a business,"
explained the businessman when he recalled that the crisis in his company began with the Verazul venture, the "most important project that Hope Funds had."
"It was 25% of Nordelta,
ten thousand people
were
going to live
, we were seeing if we would put a train station," he said about that real estate project that he concluded with a trust and sale of land.
In addition, the businessman questioned the obstacles that were placed on him to carry out the project, since "every time he made a commercial stimulus, they disapproved of the proposal" and
"approved and disapproved" of
everything he proposed.
He then referred to the flooding in the area for which Verazul, located on the banks of the Luján River, was blamed.
"They destroyed it," said Blaksley, who added: "They use me to do advertising operations for them, who are the ones running Verazul today."
"I never moved a good, I never did any activity with any good since I was inhibited, I never sold a good or wanted to hide any share package of anything," explained the defendant before judges Nestor Costabel, Jorge Gorini and Ricardo Basilico.
More than 300 scammed
The businessman is accused of leading the
largest scam in Argentine history
, against some 300 investors, for an amount estimated by investigators of around $ 1,500 million.
He is also accused of "money laundering of criminal origin, illicit association and unauthorized collection of savings from the public aggravated by having been committed through a public offering."
In the trial there are 16 other defendants.
In addition to Blaksley, his brother-in-law and administrative manager of Hope Funds, Federico Dolinkué;
the person in charge of forming companies abroad, Alejandro Miguel Carozzino, and the commercial manager Verónica Vega, among others.
With information from Télam
LM
Look also
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For the biggest scam in the history of the country, "The Argentine Madoff" will go to trial
