His defender Juan Fagúndez promised to provide the prosecution with the account statements and invoices that prove his explanations.
The business that Cunietti offered to Gustavo Basso and ended up as a partner of Candelaria Basso
Cunietti, who is an agricultural technician, said that since 2016 or 2017 he installed the El Prestigio feedlot in a field in Sauce, Canelones, where he had 4,000 animals in 45 hectares. The feedlot is an intensive livestock production system where animals are kept confined in pens and receive a high-energy diet to maximize fattening and growth in a short time.
He added that at the end of 2018, “a live cattle export business” arose and from that moment on, cattle that belonged to Gustavo Basso Negocios Rurales began to enter. After that business went well, “seeing how I worked and what I did, Basso told me that he wants to be the supplier for more future businesses in my corral.”
This is how the link began. Basso bought cattle in his name and that of Daniela Cabral, his wife, and entered them into the Cunietti feedlot. “I fed them, come the end of the month I invoiced the food service, generally 70, 80 days was what we had inside, and then he did the final sale business, either 3,000 were sold or 2,500 were sold, and those cattle were loaded to the port.” Cunietti said he charged US$0.45 or US$0.50 per animal per day for feeding the animals.
Towards the end of the statement he said that he billed him more than US$16 million in five years “in service” that includes food and care.
The next deal he proposed to Basso was to acquire Cuchilla de Silvera, a very prestigious livestock fair in Treinta y Tres (route 8 kilometer 99) that had been owned by producer Juan Carlos Martínez. “Seeing that business, which in my vision of the future was to be able to reach a screen that is part of Lote21, when I found out that it was put up for sale, I invited Gustavo to buy it.”
Cunietti told prosecutor Enrique Rodríguez that he spoke with Basso in July 2023 and they set the price at US$750,000 for the key to the business but that when it came time to sign the reservation ticket “Gustavo decided to put it in the name of Canedelaria Basso.”
– When did you find out?
– At the time of the promise of purchase and sale.
-And that’s when you found out that it was Candelaria? Did you know her, the daughter?
– The truth is that I saw Candelaria before that, I must have seen her once or twice, she didn’t even have a deal.
– And did you see her there, at the signing of the promise?
– Yes, yes, obviously, she went.
– And what did he do there? Because you had talked to him about being a partner in that, right? And when you see that the daughter is there, whom you practically didn’t know, you ask her something else, you tell her, well, how is this, what are you going to do, what position are you in, you were my partner.
– No, of course, let’s see, I asked him how this is going to work and he told me, you and I are going to work, well, there, in the sense of negotiation… Afterwards, I had no further dealings with my daughter.
– Did you explain why you decided to put it in the daughter’s name there?
– No, he didn’t explain it to me.
– And when the daughter was there to sign, she commented something, she spoke, there you were in front.
– No, she never said anything.
Cunietti stated that the purchase was made halfway and that he had to sell a truck to finish paying. He said that they began to operate and managed the sale of about 350 or 400 cattle per fortnight that were from different suppliers and a commission of 4.5 or 5% was billed. However, business did not go so well after another firm began to compete in Lavalleja.
The deed of sale was signed, as well as declared Basso’s daughteron December 21, 2024, after Basso’s death, to which the prosecutor asked Cunietti about the reason for that decision. “Those who promoted it were the seller’s notaries, the only concern would be, I don’t know, I was on the hook,” he said.
He added that at that time he told Basso’s daughter and wife that “it was unfeasible to continue for reasons that were publicly known.” “I told them that I really wanted to leave so I could continue and that I was going to take over a company of mine and that I was going to work with my company and that’s what I did.”
The assets that Cunietti acquired
Much of Cunietti’s testimony revolved around the assets he acquired since he became associated with Basso and the transfers that Basso had made to him days prior to some of those purchases.
The prosecutor told him that from the report of the Anti-Money Laundering Secretariat it appears that on September 15, 2023, he purchased a registry in Maldonado for US$565,000. Rodríguez told him that the day before he received from Gustavo Basso’s account the sum of US$ 120,000. And the same day he wired him US$50,000 more.
In addition, that same day he received another transfer from Basso of US$200,000 from the Livestock Connection BROU account.
Cunietti stated in this regard: “I I found out when Banco República sent me this. On October 23, the Bank of the Republic asks me for justification as to why I am getting that money. I issue and show the invoices… Ob Obviously I don’t know where the money comes from, when the bank asks me for proof and I find out that they are sending me US$200,000 from Conexión Ganadera, to which I never had any connection, I ask them and they tell me that they were going to fix this issue that day, that it was an internal issue.
Then lawyer Eduardo Sasson, co-defendant of the Basso family along with Pablo Donnangelo, pointed out that on September 15, the amount of US$200,000 was refunded from Basso’s account to Conexion Ganadera.
Cunietti explained that the debts that Basso had with his company were for invoices receivable from the feedlot and that since he had signed the reservation ticket he had been demanding payment of invoices that he owed him.
When asked by the prosecutor about how much money Basso owed him at that time, Cunietti said that they were around US$680,000 of debts that “came from a long time ago” although he later said that they were from one or two months and that “they came from gross billing.” He said that he also had cattle pending collection, from sales of Jorge Cunietti made by the Gustavo Basso office.
He then specified that when Basso died, the debt amounted to more than US$900,000, so he appeared in the Basso inheritance contest to claim collection, where he also claimed U S$350,000 for two unpaid checks
Cunietti said that after Basso’s death he met with the family, son-in-law Alfredo Rava, Cabral and Agustina Basso and asked them to “give him a hand”, not to “leave him stranded” and to pay his debts. They responded that “there was no money.”
He said he had five checks to cash that Basso had given him that totaled US$800,000. “Give Niela asks me not to cash the checks, that she is going to pay me.” Then she transferred US$300,000 from the HSBC account and US$80,000 from the Scotiabank account on January 27, 2025.
Returning to the other assets that the prosecutor purchased, on July 19, 2022, he listed a registry in Durazno for US$ 442,874. Also at that time, Basso transferred US$196,000 a few days before and another US$250,000 four days before the purchase.
Cunietti stated: “I did business at my discretion, I saw that something was cheap and I bought it, automatically, well, but if I know that they owe me, I go and buy and then I demand that they pay me (the debts).”
The prosecutor insisted: “Do you buy before you get paid?”, to which Cunietti said he had meant that he made the reservation ticket and then tried to “hurry up the debtor.”
In the list of assets, the prosecutor mentioned a lease contract dated June 15, 2018 for a field in Florida, a purchase and sale of September 2023 in Canelones for US$ 122,500, another in Florida acquired in for which I paid US$ 787,000 e media with another person through BROU loans.
