⚖ JUDICIAL ·  POLITICS ·  RESEARCH

Beatriz Viegas (72) and Claudia Sbabo (64), former owners of the property at 500 Miró Street, testified this afternoon before federal prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita. The operation was written at US$230,000: Adorni only paid US$30,000 at the time of signing and was left owing the remaining US$200,000, without interest, due in November 2026. Judge Ariel Lijo has already lifted the tax and banking secrecy of the official and his wife. The cause escalates.

Graciela Molina and Victoria Cancio arrived in Comodoro Py on Monday. This Wednesday it is the turn of Viegas and Sbabo. (Sources: Infobae / La Nación)

The case for alleged illicit enrichment that falls on Manuel Adorni, current Chief of Staff of the Nation and former presidential spokesman of Javier Milei, entered this week an evidentiary stage of high political and judicial voltage. The file, instructed by Federal Judge Ariel Lijo and delegated to the prosecutor's office of Dr. Gerardo Pollicita, accumulates complaints about real estate operations that would have far exceeded the economic capacity declared by the official before the Anti-Corruption Office.

The investigation originated from a formal complaint filed by Deputy Marcela Pagano, who pointed out inconsistencies between Adorni's declared assets and the acquisitions made during his administration in government. To this complaint were added alerts for a private plane trip to Punta del Este and various real estate financing operations with individuals, without the intervention of the formal banking system.

Beatriz Viegas, 72, and Claudia Sbabo, 64, are the central protagonists of the judicial day on Wednesday, April 15. Both women are the former owners of the apartment located at 500 Miró Street, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Caballito, the property that Manuel Adorni wrote together with his wife Bettina Angeletti in November 2025.

The purchase and sale operation was documented at a declared value of US$230,000. However, the fact that set off the judicial alarms was the financing mechanism: Adorni paid just US$30,000 at the time of the deed and the sellers themselves – the two retirees – financed the remaining US$200,000, without charging interest, maturing in November 2026.

According to the documentation included in the file and the statements of the notary Adriana Nechevenko, who participated in the operation, it was a modality of "direct financing of sellers": a sale agreed in installments and not a loan of external capital. However, the prosecution is seeking to determine whether this mechanism was legitimate or if it was used to disguise the origin of the funds, especially since the declared value of the property contrasts with other indicators of the case.

Prosecutor Pollicita will take testimony from the two women and, in addition, will require them to appear with their cell phones. The goal is to access call logs, text messages, audios, emails, and images related to the operations under investigation. This procedure has become a pattern in the case: Graciela Molina and Victoria Cancio – who testified on Monday – also had information seized from their devices.

Before the turn of Viegas and Sbabo, on Monday, April 13, two other creditors of Adorni testified before the prosecutor Pollicita: Graciela Isabel Molina, a retired police commissioner, and her daughter Victoria María José Cancio, an accountant active in the same force.

Mother and daughter are listed as lenders of US$100,000 to the Chief of Staff, divided into US$85,000 (Molina) and US$15,000 (Cancio), delivered on November 15, 2024. That date is not a minor detail: it coincides exactly with the day that Adorni's wife, Bettina Angeletti, bought the house in the country Indio Cuá, in Exaltación de la Cruz, province of Buenos Aires.

As collateral, Adorni offered a mortgage on the apartment he lived in at the time at 1100 Asamblea Avenue, in the Parque Chacabuco neighborhood. During their testimony, the witnesses confirmed that the official has already returned US$30,000, but still owes them US$70,000 plus the interest agreed at 11% per year in 24 monthly installments. The expiration date is November 2026.

A judicially colored detail: minutes before entering to testify, Graciela Molina received a WhatsApp message with a support emoji sent from the phone of the notary Nechevenko. The communication was considered relevant by the prosecutor and was formally incorporated into the file.

The case accumulates a considerable volume of evidence that prosecutor Pollicita is processing in parallel to the witness statements. Below is the detail of the body of evidence up to April 15, 2026:

The most striking element of the case is not the existence of debts – something in itself legal – but the nature of them: loans from individuals without bank intervention, with favorable conditions that are difficult to obtain in the formal market (without interest in some cases, or at rates well below the average of the informal segment).

The prosecution aims to reconstruct the "route of the funds": how the money got into the hands of the lenders, whether they had sufficient economic capacity to justify the amounts delivered and whether those funds were used by Adorni for simultaneous acquisitions with his wife.

A piece of information indicated in the file indicates that the US$100,000 lent by Molina and Cancio on November 15, 2024 would have been used that same day for the purchase of the house in the country Indio Cuá. The official's wife, Bettina Angeletti, would have taken that cash to a branch of Banco Galicia to deposit it and then transfer it to the seller of the property, Juan Ernesto Cosentino.

The notary Adriana Nechevenko occupies a central place in the framework of the file. He participated in the deeds of at least two of the properties investigated and intervened in the documentation of mortgage loans between private parties. Before the prosecutor, he denied the existence of cash loans and described the operations as "normal" transactions, framed in the modality of direct financing between seller and buyer.

However, when asked how it was possible for two retirees with fixed incomes to lend US$200,000 without interest, the notary could not or did not want to give explanations: "You have to ask him that," was her answer, according to judicial sources. The statement left more questions than certainties and motivated the prosecutor to move forward with the request for the lifting of banking and tax secrecy.

A striking episode: the day after her statement, Nechevenko spontaneously returned to the federal courts of Comodoro Py, without having been summoned. According to what transpired from the judicial environment, he went to make clarifications and hand over his cell phone, which he had said he had forgotten the day before.

The file entered a stage of acceleration that judicial operators describe as a "cruise": the lifting of tax and banking secrecy opened channels of information that the prosecutor's office will process in the coming weeks. These are the main open fronts:

The central axis of the investigation is to determine whether Manuel Adorni experienced illicit enrichment under the terms of Article 268 of the Argentine Criminal Code, which punishes the public official who, when duly requested, cannot justify the origin of an appreciable patrimonial enrichment. The penalty is two to six years in prison and absolute disqualification for life.

At the same time, the case opens a window on the figure of mortgage financing between private parties as an alternative mechanism to the formal banking system: a practice that, although it exists and in many cases is legitimate, is exposed to judicial scrutiny when it involves public officials obliged to account for their assets.

📚 SOURCES AND VERIFICATION

Infobae: The retirees who financed Adorni's apartment in Caballito will testify today in Comodoro Py

La Nación: Adorni's two lenders declared that he owes them US$70,000 plus interest

Infobae — Lijo tax secrecy: Judge Ariel Lijo ordered the lifting of the banking and tax secrecy of Manuel Adorni and his wife

Minute One: Manuel Adorni Case: Retired Lenders Confirmed That the Employee Owes Them US$70,000

Agencia Comunas: Federal Judge Ariel Lijo ordered the lifting of the banking and tax secrecy of Adorni and his wife

⚖ Independent Judicial Journalism · Verified coverage with multiple sources · Argentina 2026

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