Drug violence in Rosario and football: the beginnings of a world champion and the suspicions surrounding his passing

The bullets that stung -symbolically- near the Messi They have brought attention back to drug violence to the football spectrum. In Argentina, about ten years ago, justice came to investigate the death of Angelo Correarecently champion in Qatar 2022for the suspicion that a percentage of his pass matched the sash The monkeyswho control much of the illegal drug trade in Rosario.

The drug trade rakes in millions every day out of the system. To insert it in the circuit, an activity worthy of these figures is required: agribusiness, real estate market or football pass. Shortly after Correa’s professional debut at San Lorenzo in 2013, the footballer was summoned by Rosario’s Justice, who tried to establish whether or not Los Monos owned a percentage of his pass, which was already starting to be traded forcefully.

Why? After the murder of Claudius Ariel Bird stonemasonsingled out as one of the leaders of the gang, during the investigation of the case wiretaps were carried out in which Correa’s family began to be mentioned on several occasions.

Correa is from Rosario and lived part of his childhood in the Las Flores neighborhood, precisely the epicenter of Los Monos. The suburb where the Atlético Madrid striker tried his first dribble on the outskirts of the metropolis of Santa Fe is the same one where one of the biggest drug trafficking gangs in the country has established itself.

There he lived with his nine siblings and their parents, until he left the city in 2007 to live in Buenos Aires, having signed as a youth player for Ciclón. His older brother and father were already dead.

Back then, his representative was Francisco Lapiana, targeted by Justice for an alleged relationship with Los Monos. When he was called to testify, Correa had already done so Agostino Gimenez By proxy and with the permission of the club, the striker returned to Rosario to answer -as a witness-, on the way in which the various participations of his passage were rigged. I was 18.

In the wiretaps conversations were recorded between Lapiana – his former representative and the one who took him to the test in San Lorenzo, and Ramón Machucaalias Monchi, one of the leaders of Los Monos. The representative also had a precedent for forgery of money and the investigations followed the hypothesis that he could be one of the gang’s nominees.

In court, Correa said that 60 percent of his pass corresponded to San Lorenzo, 30 was still in the hands of Lapiana and the remaining 10 to Giménez, his representative. As a precautionary measure, the Judge informed San Lorenzo of the impossibility of transferring the player, as the parts of his pass could be considered evidence.

But that time Correa also responded to his relationships with alleged members of Los Monos: his voice was also recorded in the wiretaps. Monchi and Correa were talking on the phone before a San Lorenzo-Boca match in which the player had a remarkable performance and scored the definitive 3-0 with which he won the Cyclone. In the previous one, the two spoke naturally about the tickets and the parking obtained for Machuca and others to enter the stadium.

In her response, she explained that she knew the people mentioned due to their relationship in the Las Flores neighborhood, where they all came from. The case continued, Correa was again called to testify, but he refrained from participating because he was already living in Spain, having been transferred to Atlético de Madrid.

Lapiana was singled out as one of Los Monos’ frontmen but was acquitted in late 2019 of charges of illicit association and money laundering. In the same year, one of the leaders of the hitmen of Los Monos, Leandro Olivera, was arrested in Rosario together with his partner, Juliet CorreaÁngel’s sister and released hours later for finding no connection to the gang.

But the “mega lawsuit” didn’t just include Correa’s name. Among them were 120 other players under the magnifying glass of Justice Never Banega, when he moved from the lower ranks of Newell’s to Boca, long before a transfer to Valencia of Spain was finalised. A percentage of Rosario’s midfielder was also from Lapiana.

Without tools to verify this, football is not shown with the smudges of Creole drug cartels, however eloquent the links may seem. The investigation did not prevent Correa from developing his career or that of any of the other players whose surnames appear on the medical records. In any case, for the investigation which ended with several members of Los Monos behind bars, Football was one more window through which the investigations appeared.