Close associate of Pope Francis arrested for fraud

A national official who is a friend of Pope Francis has been arrested in Cordoba: she is accused of fraud against the public administration and embezzlement.

Alicia Peressutti is director of Institutional Relations at the National Ombudsman's Office.

The case is allegedly linked to her work in an NGO for victims of human trafficking.

National official Alicia Peressutti, who is very close to Pope Francis, was arrested on Friday for alleged crimes of fraud against the public administration, illicit association, embezzlement and falsification of a private instrument.

Peressutti has been the director of Institutional Relations of the National Ombudsman's Office since November 2022, when she was called to fill the post left vacant by Tomás Dadic after his death.

To accept the offer, she resigned as auditor general of the Municipality of the Cordoba city of Villa María, a post to which she had been elected on two occasions (2015 and 2019) on the ticket of Mayor Martín Gill.

She has maintained close ties with Jorge Bergoglio since he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. This relationship led her to be invited in October 2022 to participate as a speaker at the World Peace Meeting held in Rome, Italy, together with religious leaders from all over the world. The last meeting between the two was last May.

The arrest was issued this Friday by the Second Prosecutor's Office of Villa María, which lead by  Juliana Companys.  Peressutti was reportedly arrested while she was shopping in a Chinese supermarket called Eco Dean Funes.

According to the local press, the accusations are linked to the administration of a home for victims of human trafficking, in the framework of a case that already has other detainees.

Specifically, Peressutti is the founder and former head of Vínculos en Red, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) for victims of trafficking and for young people with addictions.

Reactions after Alicia Peressutti's arrest

Councillor Karina Bruno of Juntos por el Cambio was surprised by Peressutti's arrest. "It's the style and the forms of this government, which are still consistent," she said ironically.

However, she took aim at Peressutti for a 2017 criminal case for alleged overpricing: "Curiously, the sworn statements of former mayor Eduardo Accastello, which should have been in the custody of the Audit Office occupied by Peressutti, had disappeared, or could not be found".

For his part, the radical councillor Luis Caronni considered that the arrest is "another example of the degree of decomposition of Gill's government during the last few years, especially in the second term of office".

"The mayor himself has been charged in two cases, another official is still in detention, and now the former auditor, who left her post with total irresponsibility, has gone from being the city's second in command to being detained on charges that are unusually serious. It is all the work and product of the total mismanagement of this municipal administration," he concluded.

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