Fernando Romero Nuñez Argentine football club San Lorenzo president Marcelo Moretti has been accused of fraud after footage of him allegedly taking a bribe went viral on Tuesday. The video also shows a Chief of Staff employee, who was fired soon after because of his association with the scandal.
The video, recorded by Argentine TV news outlet Canal 9 with a concealed camera, shows the club president allegedly receiving US$25,000 dollars from the mother of a youth player to sign him to a professional contract.
Claims of a donation
Moretti has been part of San Lorenzo’s board since 2012, and on Wednesday refuted the claims in an interview with sports channel TyC Sports. “There’s people who want to set me up,” he said of the videos. “They have been blackmailing me since last year.”
He added he intended to present himself before a judge to give the names of those he thinks are behind it, saying he’s “free of guilt in this case.”
“The money was a donation, and it went straight to the club’s treasury,” Moretti insisted. “I’ve been putting money out of my own pocket in the club for years. I’ve loaned the club money I’ve never collected. San Lorenzo is my life.”
María José Scottini, a businesswoman from La Plata who’s seen giving Moretti the money, gave the same version of events.
“What Moretti said is what happened, it was a donation,” she told TyC. “There was another donation and there will be another one. I’m very calm about what I did.”
She insisted she’s not aware of who was filming as “there were a lot of people in the room,” but added she has “an idea” and will say so if called to court. She added there is “a lot of bad faith” in releasing the video and that “the person who did it knows why they’re doing it.”
Legal repercussions
At midnight on Wednesday night, the San Lorenzo president announced via his X account that he will take leave from his position to “exercise a legitimate and free defense both in court and in the media” and “protect the club.”
Moretti’s opposition in the 2023 San Lorenzo presidential elections, César Francis and Christian Mera, later filed a complaint against him so that “the publicly known events are investigated,” the former told TyC. He added: “We want to know if this is a case of fraudulent administration.” If found guilty, Moretti could face time in between up to a month and six years in prison.
The Argentine Football Association (AFA) announced on Tuesday that the Ethics Committee will investigate the case. The investigation will be led by the association’s Judicial Bodies, which “act with complete independence, within the AFA’s Code of Ethics and Statutes.”
The scandal also hit the government of Argentina. One of the people seen in the video is Francisco Sánchez Gamino, who held the position of Undersecretariat for Strategic Affairs, reporting to the Office of the Chief of Staff.
“He was a low-ranking employee, he was fired just three hours [after the video went viral].” officials told the Herald’s sister publication Ámbito, adding Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos “was unaware of who he was.”
