Introduction
Im going to talk about a case that happened in Argentina, whose main culprit are the brothers, Miguel Paolantonio and Alejandro Paolantonio. These brothers were blamed for the illegal business of smuggling merchandise (fabrics, spare parts, electrical items, etc.) from China through containers, which were not checked by customs because the Paolantonio brothers had «arrangements» with Ricardo Echegaray ( important official of the then government of the day) and other high-ranking officials.
It should be noted that the following information is an investigation by Matías Longoni for the newspaper.
Development
«Miguel Paolantonio, 44 years old, is called» Negro. “His younger brother, 36 years old, Alejandro Paolantonio, is known as «Tata». Knowing these two nicknames will be key from now on to understand a kind of intimate newspaper of the most important band of smugglers who operated in Buenos Aires in recent years. Clarín was able to access and verify the veracity of this and many other documents that describe in great detail how, under the protection of the main Customs authorities during the Kirchner administration, an illegal business operated that mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars and seriously affected the national industry.
Between the Black and the Tata there is a third brother, Raul Paolantonio, 40 years old, who is in charge of coordinating the trucks belonging to the company Transports DTM SRL. The firm was created by the three brothers in May 2011 with a capital of 80,000 pesos and the objective of providing container transport and logistics services for commerce. It has an address in Balcarce 871, in San Telmo, just eight blocks from the Casa Rosada, and already has a fleet of several vehicles. But it is, in reality, a mask, the formal screen so that from the shadows you can do something else: this group of smugglers, according to records held by this newspaper that include daily activity minutes, accounting entries and movement documents customs, mobilized in 2014 at least 180 containers full of prohibited merchandise, which rose to more than half a thousand last year.
In front of the legal headquarters of Transports DTM SRL, in the building of Balcarce 880, there is another office from which the Negro and the Tata manage the real business of the group. There they put together the necessary logistics to introduce the country «Made in China» items that are loaded in Hong Kong and unloaded in Buenos Aires, usually in the BACTSSA terminal. According to the newspaper, the Paolantonio quote each container at between 40,000 and 85,000 dollars. That is the money necessary to «oil» the entire circuit of Customs controls.
The contraband, and not the transport, the Paolantonio were really dedicated in the last four or five years, at least until December 2015. Since the change of government, the new head of the Customs, the retired military Juan José Gómez Centurión, began to block that illegal circuit with various measures. The most elementary was that all «cans» that aroused suspicions due to their lower weight were inevitably derived to the Red Channel, that is, they had to be opened to verify the cargo, which caused a large number of containers to remain in the ports and warehouses. Prosecutors without anybody claiming them, official sources estimated that some 200 would belong to the operations of these three brothers.
To bring the merchandise the Paloantonio brothers used a structure of importing companies that are also clearly identified. The aforementioned Different Imports SA, Corport SA, Vocasser SRL, Oslona SRL, Las Cortaderas SRL, Sicem BA SRL, Candozar SA and New Unique Import SA are the main social reasons used by the group since 2011 as an importer of the products they requested especially the local merchants.
All these societies have a few years of life, were created with people who generally live in humble neighborhoods of the suburbs and most do not even have employees under their care. According to the consulted sources, this type of companies generally dedicated to the «wholesale sale of bazaar items» were purchased from a network of accounting studies, which frequently alter their managers and change the legal domicile, to complicate the controls. In these cases it was not necessary, because nobody controlled them.
The volume of business in which the Paolantonio have participated through these importers is inexhaustible. In the obtained documentation there is registration of the entry of more than 400 containers in 2015 only at the hands of four of those firms. But that would only be a part. The container ship «Valence», which usually passes through the Chinese ports and then docks in Buenos Aires, on its trip in June 2015 brought the exact number of 23 containers loaded with «crap», as the brothers call many times in their notes to merchandise smuggled in.
The sources consulted for this research clearly identify the «Negro» Miguel Paolantonio as the head of this organization dedicated to large-scale contraband”.
Conclusion
I arrived to that the government should pay more attention to who puts in charge in important jobs, because there will always be someone who wants to commit an illegal act (contraband) nut these acts will never be able to specify if there are people who do their job and prevent these things from happening, instead of receiving “bribes”.
On the other hand, it would also be good for universities to teach students what not to do (although everyone knows what is legal and illegal) with real life cases and which happened in our country.
Bibliography
https://www.clarin.com/politica/negro-tata-contenedores-buenos-aires_0_EyeaAUEGW.html
