Who is the first president of Argentine football convicted of doing business with barrabrava

“I’m calmer, now we have to wait for the sentence”, had manifested Paul Esser at the beginning of May, when he appeared to testify at the Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Villa María before the court presided over by Judge Jaime Díaz Gavier and whose Attorney General is Maximiliano Hairabedian.

However, the Oral Court 1 of Córdoba sentenced the former president of Sportivo Belgrano to four years of effective prison after investigations found him to be a secondary participant in an organized drug dealing and money laundering network led by bar boss Braian Requena, who was given eight years.

A historic event in Argentine football, to be the first president of an Argentine club convicted of ties to the bar association and his subsequent sentence.

Esser was going through his second term as top manager of the Córdoba club, following his first mandate between 2003 and 2007, and had been champion of the Córdoba league as a footballer in the 1990s, but all that has gained prestige appears to be lost in an instant.

Louis Maria Viaut It was the prosecutor who began investigating an illicit drug trafficking association involving Requena in 2018 and, along the way, discovered that it was Esser, who owns a holding company, providing the funding.

What complicated his situation, strictly going to what happened, is that it was shown to him the president was the one who sold the dollars he used to exchange them for drugs to the earner, while the rest of the bar members were in charge of delivery, distribution and / or marketing.

As detailed Gustavo Grabiajournalist specializing in football violence, Requena went from living on a loaned property to buying seven houses which he placed in the name of a figurehead, one of which has two floors with a very large swimming pool, with an outdoor Jacuzzi and a field with many horses. In addition, a van and a high-end car were kidnapped.

While it is not fair to put everyone in the same bag, as they say colloquially, the links of leaders with the barrabrava of their respective clubs are common currency in Argentine football and do not attract attention at all. But what is historic is the conviction: Esser is the first president convicted in the history of Argentine football for links with the bar.

In River, for example, the case shared by former president Daniel Passarella The drunks of the Plankas well as in Independiente, closer in time, there is still no resolution on the trials of Pablo Bebote Álvarez and the secretary general HectorYo-yo Maldonado.

In any case, what stands out in the case of the Sportivo Belgrano is that those involved are actually convicted and do not remain in nothing as has happened on many occasions. Also, it is planned to create a precedent for changing this type of action in the future.