Gonzalo Aguiar Gadea
(46) was known for being the owner of La Maison, a luxurious and famous property in Punta del Este, and also for being investigated for a million-dollar scam, when he was in charge of
Boreal
, a
company dedicated to medicinal cannabis in Uruguay
.
Today at dawn he died, at the age of 46, as a result of a shot to the chest that his ex-partner gave him.
The probable circumstances of the outcome are known today: he would have broken into his ex-partner's house, at four in the morning and on the corner of Mar Chiquita and Mar de Coral, in Maldonado.
There the woman, mother of one of Aguiar's children, would have started an argument.
Then, the former couple shot him in the chest, although the official report says “
hypoglycemic shock
.”
This is how Gonzalo Aguiar died.
But who was he?
In 2021, he had acquired La Maison at auction, a property in Punta del Este, located on San Pablo Avenue, near the Golf Club and a few blocks from Playa Brava.
On a land of
6,000 square meters
, the town covers 1,700 and had all the comforts: five bedroom suites, a garage for five cars, a movie room and a games room;
two luxury dining rooms, in which the furniture is worth almost as much as many other properties in Punta del Este;
a kitchen and a grill.
Swimming pool, heated, bathrooms with jacuzzi, sauna, smart lighting, stairs and marble coverings.
The list of luxuries of that property could demand more lines: such was Aguiar's fortune, although the exact value that he paid at auction to keep La Maison was not revealed.
There is a possible explanation: Boreal, a company in the Uruguayan cannabis industry.
In February 2023, this property was attacked by a
commando group of four assailants
, after they had beaten security employees and Aguiar's own father, 85 years old at the time.
The loot from the robbery was
a security chest and twenty weapons
, both short and long, some of them collectible;
In addition, cell phones of each and every one of the guards and of Aguiar Sr.
The subsequent investigation specified that one of Gonzalo Aguiar's bodyguards would have had something to do with planning the robbery.
Gonzalo Aguiar
How did Aguiar come to buy such a property?
He was known, recently, for being the representative in Uruguay of the company Boreal, with
Canadian capital
and dedicated to the field of medicinal cannabis.
In 2020, the president of Uruguay,
Luis Lacalle Pou
, inaugurated a 5,000-square-meter industrial plant in the Uruguayan department of Salto that Boreal was going to use for the production and processing of medical marijuana, a legal activity in that country.
Even Lacalle Pou cut the ribbon with Aguiar, as an inauguration.
Next to him were also the Canadian ambassador and the presidential secretary.
In 2023, the company went bankrupt and
laid off its last 40 workers via WhatsApp
.
The subsequent investigation, jointly between the intervening prosecutor's office and the Uruguayan Ministry of Labor, revealed part of the plot that began the partnership between Canadian investors and Aguiar to establish a company that
intended to employ more than 4,000 people,
operate the production plant of largest cannabis in Latin America and ended up in embezzlement, with 1% of the workers it planned to employ.
They murdered the owner of one of the most important properties in Punta del Este, Gonzalo Aguiar.
Photo: Courtesy of El País - Uruguay
El
Diario Cambio
, from Salto, replicated part of the plot.
John Pollesel and Brian Montgomery, businessman and lawyer respectively, of Canadian origin, knew Aguiar when he lived for a time in Canada, in Sudbury, a suburb of Ontario.
Both were recruiting potential investors to establish the cannabis industry in Uruguay, legalized by former president José Mujica, legal in Canada.
They entrusted Aguiar with
US$27.5 million
to establish Boreal, among other things, to acquire legal licenses and equipment necessary to set up huge plantations.
Aguiar would have been a good candidate due not only to his knowledge of the country, but also to connections his father would have had with Mujica.
They hoped, in addition to supplying Uruguay, to export flowers, oil and other cannabis products to Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
In addition to the responsibility for the economic and logistical administration of the Boreal company, Aguiar received shareholding.
Once the company went bankrupt, it was learned that Aguiar misrepresented investment reports, transaction receipts and, what is worse, bank reports to Banco República Oriental de Uruguay.
They murdered the owner of one of the most important properties in Punta del Este, Gonzalo Aguiar.
Photo: Courtesy of El País - Uruguay
In the case of embezzlement from the company and the dismissal of employees, the Union of Rural and Agroindustrial Workers, a trade union, intervened.
The president of this institution at that time mentioned three hypotheses that were being used regarding the Boreal embezzlement: the company had to stop its exports, that there were errors in the choice of genetics to grow and therefore could not market them, or that Aguiar sent fraudulent reports to investors during the pandemic.
When the Canadians went to Uruguay to learn about the conditions of the fall from grace and be close to the investigation, they learned that
much of the money intended for investment never had that destination
.
A low blow, considering that the partnership between Aguiar and the Canadian investors dated back to 2014, when the former began to serve as president of the Mexican subsidiary of Boreal Agromineral Inc, a soil fertility research company.
Previously, according to his profile on Apollo, a social network similar to LinkedIn, he had been an executive at Optima Caulking, a Canadian construction and manufacturing company.
Aguiar's previous life, the one prior to denouncing a 20 million dollar scam against his investors, workers and the Uruguayan government, before being sued by all of them, little is known.