The Economic Criminal Chamber rejected for the third time a request from the treasurer of the Argentine Football Association (AFA), Pablo Tovigginofor remove judge Diego Amarante of the cause in which it is investigated for evasionnext to Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia and the board of directors of the football governing organization.
The waiter Roberto Hornos He reconfirmed Judge Amarante as head of the investigation for improper withholding of contributions.
The defense strategy had also added a complaint from the AFA lawyer Gregorio Dalbon against the magistrate (already archived) and a presentation before the Judicial Council where they asked for his political trial.
Now, Chamber A of the Economic Criminal Chamber considered that there are no objective elements that prove a enmityanimosity or aversion of the magistrate towards the leader, nor a loss of impartiality with which the judiciary must be carried forward.
The ruling was signed by chambermaid Hornos, who imposed the costs on Toviggino.
The resolution is the Toviggino’s third consecutive defeat in his attempt to remove Amarante from the file that has him prosecuted together with Chiqui Tapia. The previous two had also been resolved by Hornos, who is a member of the court along with the judge Carolina Robiglio.
In this third presentation, Toviggino’s lawyer, Marcelo Rocchettialleged that Judge Amarante incurred a new manifestation of manifest enmity by giving a “differentiated treatment” to two presentations arriving on the same day.
The first is a complaint of “forum shopping” that the defense filed before the court itself. The second, an expansion of the complaint filed by the Customs Collection and Control Agency (ARCA) against Tapia, Toviggino and other leaders.
While the presentation of the collection agency was sent to the prosecutor immediately, the presentation of the defense, according to Rochetti, was ignored.
Faced with a request for prompt dispatch, the magistrate responded with a letter that Rocchetti described as ironic and dark.
Hornos did not agree with him. He pointed out that The claim that a complaint against the judge himself be processed before that same court “is not compatible with any criterion of procedural logic”.
And he said that even if the correctness of the procedure granted to the expansion of the ARCA could be discussed, the parties have specific resources to challenge it. The challenge, he stressed, cannot become a mechanism to displace the natural judge of the case.
Judge Amarante prosecuted Tapia and Toviggino in March 2026 for the alleged improper retention of $19,353 million in pension contributions and national taxes not deposited between March 2024 and September 2025.
On March 11, barely finished the investigation of Toviggino – who entered the Avenida de los Inmigrantes courts surrounded by a security operation and left in an unlicensed van -, AFA lawyer Dalbón announced that he was going to denounce the judge.
Filed by lottery in Federal Court No. 12, in charge of Julian Ercoliniwith the intervention of prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, the case was archived due to the non-existence of the crime.
The lawyer said that Amarante would have prevented Tapia from leaving the country even though he knew that the president of the AFA had a role in the efforts to repatriate the gendarme. Nahuel Gallodetained in Venezuela.
In May, the lawyer also filed a complaint with the Judicial Council against Amarante, whom he accused of having maintained alleged “extra-procedural coordination” with ARCA officials in the AFA case.
Hornos, who today signed the rejection of the third challenge, is a member of the court that must also review the prosecutions issued by Amarante.
