Federal prosecutor opens phones in SIRA currency scheme investigation

Federal prosecutor Franco Picardi has begun extracting data from the cellular phones of Central Bank officials and associates of financier Elías Piccirillo, searching through message chains and call logs for evidence of a sprawling currency manipulation scheme that operated during Alberto Fernández's presidency. The investigation centers on SIRA—a system meant to streamline foreign trade operations—which prosecutors allege was weaponized to funnel official dollars to select companies at favorable rates, allowing them to resell those dollars on the black market for enormous profit.

The breakthrough came from Martín Migueles's phone, a financier and former executive at ARG Exchange, one of the currency agencies at the heart of the scheme. According to a Central Bank administrative report, ARG Exchange was reselling foreign currency to other agencies at prices above the official market rate—a practice that only made economic sense if those buying agencies could then place those dollars somewhere the exchange rate was substantially higher. In other words, the official market rate and the black market rate. Migueles, along with others identified in court documents only as "El Pipo," "La Señora," and "Pato," allegedly offered to accelerate SIRA approvals and guarantee authorizations, giving certain companies privileged access to official currency markets.

Picardi has now opened the phone of Valeria Fernández, a former external auditor at the Central Bank during Fernández and Sergio Massa's tenure. According to judicial sources, the contents of her device should concern former Central Bank officials. In encrypted chats between Migueles and Francisco Hauque—Piccirillo's former partner who claims he was framed by a fake police operation—the two men repeatedly reference a "vieja del Central" or simply "Fernández," apparently in reference to the ex-auditor. Hauque, in one message, claimed he was willing to "turn on the fan" and expose others who had made millions through similar schemes. In another, he suggested that Piccirillo had "put in order" the woman from the Central Bank.

The prosecutor is waiting to access phones belonging to other Piccirillo associates—Mariano Fabián Henaise and Tomás Schulze—beginning in June, hoping to cross-reference their messages with those found on Fernández's device. He has also requested access to phones belonging to Eduardo Gil, another former external auditor; Pablo Blanco, director of Banco Sucrédito and linked to Piccirillo; and several Central Bank officials responsible for overseeing currency agencies, including Romina García, who in an audio recording claimed there were "fixed" people inside the institution. García has not yet provided the access code to her phone. Picardi is also waiting for the Commerce Ministry to detail which officials authorized the suspicious SIRA operations during Kirchner's government—a step he considers essential to move forward with new interrogations.

Picardi has already identified two SIRA operations allegedly approved through bribery. One involved the company Cowdin SA, linked to SIRA authorization number 23001SIRA133599Z-DX225LCA-7MSRL. The other involved Napoli Inversiones SA. He has requested that federal judge Ariel Lijo lift the fiscal, financial, and stock market secrecy surrounding both companies. A message posted in June 2023 by then-Commerce Secretary Matías Tombolini on Instagram caught judicial attention. Tombolini noted that between January and May of that year, the SIRA had approved 88 percent of all applications received—22,691 companies, 97 percent of them small and medium enterprises. But he also disclosed that authorizations worth $14.127 billion had been granted but not yet used for imports. "It seems that some who obtained authorization are speculating, choosing the right moment to bring in the merchandise," Tombolini wrote. Prosecutors are now asking why, if he detected this anomaly, he did not file a judicial complaint or open an internal investigation.

A separate thread in the investigation involves an alleged video of Jésica Cirio, Piccirillo's ex-wife, counting thousands of dollars in a dressing room at a property in San Vicente belonging to Martín Insaurralde, the former chief of staff of Buenos Aires province. Insaurralde is under investigation for alleged illicit enrichment following the "Yategate" scandal involving model Sofía Clerici. Journalist Diego Suárez revealed on television that he had interviewed Piccirillo—currently under house arrest—and had seen the video, confirming that it showed Cirio filming herself in front of drawers filled with bundled dollars. Prosecutor Sergio Mola, who is investigating Insaurralde, has requested that federal judge Luis Armella call Suárez as a witness. His testimony is scheduled for June 25. In the courts, officials assume that if the video exists, the money shown would be undeclared funds. Judicial sources suggest that Piccirillo may have used the video's existence as a "message" to the justice system itself.