In these hours, another new episode emerged in the scandal surrounding Jessica Cirio and the triangle that was configured with his ex-partner Martin Insaurralde and the model Sofia Clerici. Added to another case, equally explosive, in which her later ex-husband, the financier, is involved Elías Piccirillo, in what constituted a true pandemonium of videos, dollars and luxuries that Justice is observing with great interest to add to the file of the judicial process that involves all the protagonists.
On his Instagram account, the journalist Jonathan Viale leaked the full video of Jésica Cirio walking through the dressing room and showing the hidden millions of dollars. Initially, the recording was disseminated through its digital platforms and social networks, which immediately caused an enormous media impact and the subsequent detailed coverage of the material in a journalistic investigation published by La Nación.
The leak of seven unpublished recordings, so far, show the television host filming millions of dollars in cash hidden in a dressing room, an audiovisual fragment that adds a crucial chapter to the criminal investigation for alleged illicit enrichment and money laundering that began with the “Yategate.” The material exposes the model dressed in pajamas carefully going through the personal closet of her ex-husband, the former Buenos Aires chief of staff Martín Insaurralde.
In the images, recorded on the upper floor of the family home they shared in the private neighborhood of Fincas de San Vicente, it is observed how locked drawers are opened and items of clothing are lifted to reveal multiple airtight transparent plastic bags, small suitcases and even cloth bags full of neatly arranged wads of American bills. The driver’s own physiognomy was accredited in the filming as it was reflected directly in one of the mirrors of the place while she was holding her cell phone.
After the massive public repercussion, the driver’s defense, headed by the lawyer Claudio Caffarellobroke the silence through an official statement. In his defense, Cirio claimed to be a victim of hacking and violation of his privacy, ensuring that the audiovisual content presents digital manipulation with successive cuts and editions aimed at distorting the facts. The main argument of her legal representation maintains that the images were obtained illegitimately and that the model has been suffering systematic extortion for more than a year and a half. To support this position, they detailed that there is a prior complaint filed with the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 58 and a notarial document that certifies the threats prior to the case becoming public.
Regarding the money displayed, the host defended the legitimacy of her assets, alleging that she has worked in the private sector since she was 18 years old, that all her income is declared to the control organizations and that the capital filmed could correspond to her own funds, recalling that the file already shows that she granted $250,000 to Insaurralde at the time of the legal separation. However, the amounts disclosed in the record that she recorded herself are estimated to exceed one million dollars.
From Miami, the model Sofia Clerici did not miss the opportunity to deliver one more media blow to the case and to the presenter from her North Americans.
At the judicial level, the impact of the discovery was immediate. The federal judge of Lomas de Zamora, Luis Armella, together with prosecutor Sergio Mola, urgently ordered a series of simultaneous raids in the apartment owned by the driver in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo and in a residence located in the town of Banfield. The objective of the operations dictated by Justice was the seizure of electronic devices, computers and memory cards to advance with computer expertise and determine through technical analysis the total amount of cash seen in the videos.
Investigators consider that this money represents black and undeclared assets that remained off the radar of the investigations, which enables the possibility of calling the accused for investigation as soon as possible. Currently, Jésica Cirio is formally charged in the main case and is subject to a general asset inhibition ratified by the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation.
The chronology of this judicial file dates back to the end of September 2023, when the so-called “Yategate” broke out in the middle of the election campaign. At that time, the dissemination of photographs and videos of Insaurralde with Clerici aboard a luxurious boat on the coast of Marbella, caused the official to immediately resign from his position in the governorship and from his local candidacy. The images exhibited a disproportionate level of spending with first class travel, champagne consumption and gifts of high-end handbags. Subsequent audits reflected in the prosecutor’s opinions determined that the journey cost more than 41,000 euros and 8,000 dollars.
A few days later, in October 2023, complaints rained down in the courts of La Plata and Lomas de Zamora, unifying the investigation into Insaurralde, Clerici and Cirio for money laundering and illicit enrichment. During the initial raids that year, the police seized almost $600,000 in Clerici’s home, who later requested his dismissal arguing that the money came from his income as a “travel companion.”
The file progressed slowly due to disputes over the official accounting expertise; The initial judge in the case, Ernesto Kreplak, had appointed the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the UBA, but after tax appeals, the Criminal Cassation Chamber ordered that the patrimonial expertise on the 75 suspicious items be strictly carried out by the Corps of Experts of the Supreme Court of Justice. Among the specific luxury goods formally incorporated into the file to evaluate the patrimonial inconsistency of those investigated, the specialists detected an impressive collection of high-end watches from international brands such as Rolex and Audemars Piguet, gold jewelry, exclusive designer handbags and high-end vehicles in the name of third parties or satellite companies.
In parallel, an explosive scandal emerged that reached the host’s last partner and then ex-husband, the financier Elías Piccirillo. Judicial investigators in the Comodoro Py courts, under the command of Judge María Servini and prosecutor Carlos Stornelli, point to him as a central player in alleged corruption maneuvers linked to the irregular approval of authorizations from the Import System of the Argentine Republic (SIRA) and the diversion of foreign currency to the informal blue dollar market during the validity of the exchange rate.
The lifting of the secrecy of the summary in that case revealed explosive chats of his former partner, Francisco Hauque, who accused Piccirillo of treason after a fierce commercial internal, threatened to expose the financial network that moved close to 250 million dollars in a year and formally requested Cirio’s statement to check if he knew of the licit or illicit operations in the environment. The messages in the file describe in detail the operation of the exchange “rulito”, an illegal financial maneuver that consisted of over-invoicing imports to access millionaire quotas of official dollars at the value regulated by the Central Bank, and then escape and liquidate these currencies in informal windows of the informal circuit at the price of the parallel dollar. The financial agencies under the court’s scrutiny, mainly ARG Exchange SA and Gis Cambio SA, channeled fraudulent operations that mobilized more than 475,000 million illegal pesos through the simulation of transactions and the use of apocryphal documentation.
Piccirillo’s situation worsened drastically in the ordinary criminal jurisdiction, where he is under preventive detention and serving house arrest at his property in Banfield. He is formally prosecuted as a co-author of illegitimate deprivation of aggravated coercive liberty, transportation of narcotics and illegitimate possession of weapons of war, accused of having orchestrated a false police operation with City Police officers to plant more than a kilo of cocaine and a gun in Hauque’s vehicle due to million-dollar debts pending from the exchange structure.
The next procedural steps of the criminal investigation focus on a series of key evidentiary measures ordered after the public appearance of the home footage. At the moment, the two cases involving Cirio are on alert following the progress of the urgent technological expertise on the cell phones seized in the last round of raids.
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