The federal judge Luis Armella intimated Jessica Cirio to appear in court within 24 hours to seize his cell phone, which supposedly contains video images of her in her dressing room surrounded by bundles of heat-sealed dollars, which investigators estimate could total about 10 million dollars.
This was reported to THE NATION judicial sources investigating alleged illicit enrichment Martin Insaurraldeformer mayor of Lomas de Zamora and ex-husband of Cirio. In this file, Cirio is investigated as an alleged participant in that crime.
The federal prosecutor Sergio Mola He also requested a series of evidentiary measures to advance the case and the newspaper was also required to THE NATION to hand over to Justice the seven videos that he made public over the weekend with the images of the bundles of dollars.
The key evidence in the case is in the process of being prepared: it is an accounting expert opinion on Insaurralde’s assets: Justice seeks to know precisely what his expenses and properties are.
There are a total of 75 points of expertise that will be carried out by the experts of the Supreme Court of Justice in agreement with the prosecutor Mola, the defense of Insaurralde, that of Cirio and that of the former official’s traveling companion Sofía Clérici, who was at his side on the Bandido yacht in Marbella. It was the photo of his trip posted on Instagram by Clérici, in 2023, that was the trigger that allowed this investigation to begin and raid everyone.
The expert opinion is putting tension between Judge Armella and prosecutor Mola. The reason is that the prosecution is demanding to include among those investigated in the expert report the assets of Insaurralde’s second wife, which were initially considered and then left out.
The rejection was appealed by the prosecutor; The judge rejected the appeal and now came to the La Plata Chamber to decide the scope of the expert opinion on that point and some clarifications on the way in which another of the items to be examined is worded.
While these accounts are being finalized, the appearance of the video with the images of bundles of heat-sealed bills added some elements to the accusation.
So much so that Insaurralde, at one point, justified part of his fortune with the money that Cirio earned. And to prove it, he attached half a dozen invoices for the construction of his house in a country in San Vicente in the name of his ex-wife and a receipt showing that she gave him, at the beginning of 2023, US$250,000 and $2,000,000.
With this defense, Insaurralde alleged that it was thanks to Cirio’s income that he was able to cover all the expenses that the Justice accused him of and that he had no way to explain, including his trip to Marbella for a week and his yacht trip through the Mediterranean with his “travel companion” Sofía Clerici.
Mola did not believe him and had that receipt examined, since the prosecutor’s office asked to investigate him for the crimes of illicit enrichment and money laundering. The amount of unjustified money, as expressed by the prosecutors when requesting the investigation of Insaurralde, amounts to about $10,000,000 between 2009 and 2023according to the researchers.
Now investigators are wondering why Cirio would “loan” him $250,000 if when they were married there were dozens of bundles of heat-stamped $100 bills in Insaurralde’s dressing room, which are now estimated to total about 10 million dollars.
To establish for sure how much money was there, Judge Armella is waiting for the videos to arrive so he can order an expert report with engineers to calculate the approximate amount of money shown in the images. They must take into account the number of bundles, the depth of the drawers and shelvesassuming that each wad is made up of $100 bills.
The defense will surely object to this methodology and a controversy will be generated that will be part of the discussion that accompanies the result of the accounting expert opinion and the future call for an investigation of Insaurralde. Cirio’s is another mattersince first it must be determined if there is a crime in the case of the former mayor and then analyze whether or not his ex-wife had some degree of participation.
