Jorge Eduardo Adorni He died on August 21, 2002, at age 62. He left a meager patrimony, a widow and two children, and a string of debts, judgments and embargoes. A panorama that did not predict what his best-known heir says he found when entering his small apartment in the center of the city of La Plata.
“I made my first money, so to speak, when my father died in 2002, which is the money that my brother and I found in the department,” said the current Chief of Staff. Manuel Adorniduring the interview he gave to LN+ this Wednesday. He did not provide amounts or details on television, or before the Anti-Corruption Office. Nor, if all or part of that money was part of the US$200,000 with which he claimed to have purchased cryptocurrencies.
The sayings of Manuel Adorni about the supposed discovery of that money caused surprise. First, because he had given a very different version of his family context in his previous public statements. Second, because it introduced an element – the alleged existence of cash – that does not emerge from the judicial records of the succession. And third, because it raised questions about his father’s actions. Did you face financial problems or decide to save at the expense of your creditors?
Adorni’s previous statements painted, in effect, a very different picture from that of an alleged discovery of money. In a tweet on October 19, 2018, the current Chief of Staff said: “In 2002 my father died and I inherited his house. There I found out about an unpaid mortgage since 1996. It took me years to fix everything, with a lot of effort,” he stated, and then vented his anger. “If I had believed that everything would be solved just because I am good and nice, today I would have nothing: I would have lost everything.”
The situation was complicated when Jorge Adorni died. The father of the current official owned a 52-square-meter apartment on the 9th floor of a building on 53rd Avenue and 4th Street, in the center of La Plata. There were three embargoes on that property: from mortgage creditors, from the administration of the consortium and from Banco Provincia, as stated in the ownership report of the Buenos Aires Real Property Registry that was obtained. THE NATION.
The claims of these creditors were expressed in three simultaneous trials. One in the city of Buenos Aires; two, in La Plata. They sought to execute the father of the current Chief of Staff for the installments of a loan with a mortgage guarantee on the department, arrears of expenses and bank debts.
Jorge Adorni had bought the apartment in 1972, being an employee and single, so the property was his own, not joint property with Silvia País, who would be his wife and mother of his children Manuel and Francisco. And with that property under his belt, he died thirty years later, in a complicated credit situation.
The highest claim was from Liliana Brittanico and her mother, Esther Vecchiola, who in 1996 had lent US$22,500 to the father of the current official with a mortgage guarantee, through a public deed. Jorge Adorni defaulted on payments and they filed for foreclosure in 2002, in the Buenos Aires courts.
It took years for Jorge Adorni’s widow and children to leave those and other problems behind. Among them, the fine imposed on País by the Buenos Aires Court of Accounts for the “infractions” and “excesses” detected in her performance as municipal accountant for Coronel Brandsen’s party, a sanction that was confirmed by the provincial Supreme Court in 2014, as verified by LA NACION.
Thus, only in 2019, the Adornis left the Banco Provincia claim behind; and in 2024, the La Plata Justice ordered a letter to be issued to the Real Estate Registry to lift the mortgage of Brittannico and his mother, although not because they had canceled what was owed to both creditors, but due to the expiration of the instance – and then prescription of the action -, as appears from the judicial files that LA NACION certified.
Other property
By then, the succession heritage had registered a novelty. It occurred on December 14, 2023, four days after the inauguration of Javier Milei as president, with Adorni as spokesman.
That day, Jorge Adorni’s widow and children appeared before the court where the succession was being processed and reported the existence of a lot of about 700 square meters in the town of Salazar, Daireaux district, that Jorge, as an only child, had inherited from his mother.
Located 450 kilometers southwest of the city of Buenos Aires, Salazar registered 2,263 inhabitants in the 2022 census. In that town, the Adorni have a lot whose tax valuation in 2026 amounts to $568,000, on a tax base of $18.2 million, according to official data from the Buenos Aires Collection Agency (ARBA). That is, about $12,500. Market value? Between $21,000 and $32,000.
However, the succession procedures took even longer. Only in June 2025 was the declaration of the widow and two children registered as sole heirs of the department of La Plata in the Real Estate Registry: 33.3% for each one. Tax value of the La Plata property? $527,896 this year, on a tax base of $6 million, according to ARBA. In other words, just over $4,100. Market value? Between 45,000 and 60,000 dollars depending on your condition.
Neither before nor after, however, Jorge Adorni’s widow and children informed the Court where the succession was processed of the existence of cash within the department of La Plata, as the current Chief of Staff revealed this Wednesday. This alleged discovery was also not communicated in the courts where the creditors’ claims were processed.
