Ivo Rojnica, alias “The Croatian,” has been in the media spotlight recently as the government cracked down on operations with the informal US dollar exchange rate known as the “blue dollar” across the city. As the owner of Nimbus, the biggest informal exchange house in Buenos Aires, the Financial Research Unit (UIF, by its Spanish acronym) called for Rojnica’s detention over charges of money laundering and illicit capital flight through Nimbus, his underground exchange house. The UIF and Customs had been investigating him for at least three weeks.

His detention on Tuesday, however, was not related to that. He was arrested on charges of money laundering — allegedly related to drug trafficking and the Mexican Sinaloa cartel — following a five-year investigation by Judge Federico Villena. Businessman Federico Pulenta and the financier Agustín Estrada Palomeque were also jailed for allegedly participating in the same scheme.

Of the three detainees, Rojnica wasn’t the only familiar face in the media. Palomeque went viral last week for publishing a video in which he makes fatphobic comments about a flight attendant of the state-owned airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas.

“In a normal company, this doesn’t happen. Now, Aerolíneas is managed by thieves and idiots,” he said in a video uploaded to his Instagram account.

The case

The detainees are accused of aiding the Sinaloa cartel in laundering money brought into Argentina to finance a drug trafficking operation known as “White Coils.” In a June 2017 investigation, the Federal Police seized two tonnes of cocaine in Bahía Blanca that the Sinaloa cartel planned to send to Europe inside steel coils. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) participated in that investigation.

“These people are forming organizations dedicated to taking money abroad,” one of the investigators told Télam. “By operating for a gang dedicated to drug trafficking, these operations violate the federal law”

The Croatian was arrested on Tuesday morning at his home in the gated community of “El Golf,” in Nordelta. That neighborhood was one of the 20 places raided by personnel from the Organized Crime Department of the City Police and the Tax Crimes Department of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA), with the assistance of Customs staff.

Pulenta was arrested in the gated community “El Encuentro,” in the Buenos Aires district of Benavídez, while Estrada Palomeque was arrested at his home in the Retiro neighborhood.

Police also raided a house which, according to the investigators, was a satellite office of Nimbus. There, they found money and weapons — among them, five pistols and two Smith & Wesson .38 Special caliber revolvers.

— with information from Télam