The backlash over the corruption scandal that uncovered the videos of Julio "Chocolate" Rigau withdrawing money from Banco Provincia ATMs continues.
After the issuance of preventive detention against the La Plata leader, justice now focuses on two new figures who appeared repeating the operation:
they withdrew money with 39 cards, in a maneuver that would collect up to 30 million pesos
per month.
Not only that, a video shows him greeting Rigau himself during an early morning at a Banco Provincia ATM.
They both know each other.
The discovery of the La Plata prosecutor Betina Lacki occurred from a report given to her by Banco Provincia, based on the security cameras of its ATMs in the first week of January of this year.
They are an older man and a much younger companion.
The 39 people from whom this couple withdrew their salaries
collected an average of $700,000 per month
from the Buenos Aires Senate and none reported the theft of their debit cards.
Some of those people are related to each other.
This Tuesday, the newspaper La Nación
confirmed that it is Hugo Santiago Muguerza (72), a historical militant of the Radical Civic Union
of La Plata with a past as an official in the local municipality.
Muguerza is a retiree who spent time at PAMI in 2002, where he was fired.
He worked in the La Plata municipality and became undersecretary of the environment in 2016. Before, he had been a substitute councilor in 1985, according to said media.
According to the records provided by Banco Provincia, Muguerza withdrew the money on three different days between August and September 2023 and in different branches.
Among the owners of these cards are two women who share a last name with the radical pointer.
They are Laura Muguerza (44) and Nadia Muguerza (33), the latter an employee of the Buenos Aires Senate.
Julio Chocolate Rigau withdraws money with one of the 48 debit cards of the legislature that he had in Banco Provincia
Also María Romina Licursi (35), whose last name appears in the Rigau case.
The thing is that Chocolate exchanged several WhatsApp messages with two other people with that same last name, Ramiro Nahuel and Ricardo, who passed screenshots of extraction tickets to the Peronist leader.
Prosecutor Lacki had launched this line of investigation after analyzing the videos from the Banco Provincia security cameras, where
"Chocolate" Rigau was seen several times interacting with a couple who also withdrew a lot of money from a large number of debit cards.
, at times when there was very little movement at the ATMs, between 5 in the morning and 7 in the morning.
With these indications, he managed to get Banco Provincia to inform him which bank accounts the suspects emptied at those times, who owned those accounts and the movement of money they recorded in the six months prior to the date of the videos analyzed by Buenos Aires Justice.
One of them is Muguerza, who has not yet appeared in the judicial investigation according to La Nación.
"Chocolate" Rigau was arrested on September 9 when he was carrying money that he took from
48 debit cards belonging to "ghost or gnocchi employees"
of the Chamber of Deputies of the province of Buenos Aires.
In that case, former Massista councilor Facundo Albini and his father Claudio, former deputy chief of staff of the provincial Chamber of Deputies, were also arrested last November, who are involved in the corruption scandal of the debit cards used by the leader Rigau.
"Chocolate" Rigau and Facundo Albini.
(Photo: Facebook PJ).
Facundo Albini was a councilor between 2019 and 2023 and was re-elected to return to the bench.
But he was detained before taking office.
Likewise, councilors do not have privileges.
The Albinis and Rigau are accused of being part of an illicit association dedicated to defrauding the Buenos Aires State.
They are accused of keeping at least $800 million from the Chamber of Deputies.
The maneuver that Justice discovered consisted of keeping the money of alleged contracted legislative employees.
The three are in preventive detention and must remain behind bars until the criminal process is concluded.
In the provincial courts, this type of case can take more than three years to reach the oral trial.