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🇦🇷 Argentina /Crime & Justice

The Scatturice Plane: A Suspicious Call That Could Hold the Key Was Kept Hidden

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data In the courts
  • A 37-second call between customs official Silvia Abalsamo and her supervisor, Marcelo Fabián Lista, took place just before passengers and crew from Leonardo Scatturice’s plane bypassed baggage controls in Buenos Aires.
  • Telecom initially sent investigators call records for the wrong year, delaying discovery of the call until after the court had decided to archive the suspected smuggling case.
  • Judge Pablo Yadarola said federal prosecutors should investigate Lista for a possible offense by a public official, separate from the smuggling allegations.

A 37-second phone call may hold the answer to who ordered customs officials not to inspect the luggage aboard Leonardo Scatturice’s plane when it arrived in Buenos Aires on Feb. 26, 2025. But investigators learned of the call only after the judge had decided to archive the suspected smuggling case.

Telecom records show that at 8:35 a.m., just after the aircraft landed, Silvia Abalsamo received a call from Marcelo Fabián Lista, her direct supervisor and head of the Aeroparque Division of Argentina’s General Customs Directorate. Minutes later, Abalsamo led the passenger and crew, all employees of Scatturice, through a route that avoided baggage controls.

Judge Pablo Yadarola wrote that the call took place while the passenger and crew remained near the aircraft, and immediately before Abalsamo made the operational decision to let them pass without any luggage inspection. The ruling does not reveal what Lista told Abalsamo, or whether he was relaying an order from someone else.

Abalsamo did not testify because Yadarola declined to call people who could eventually become suspects. Lista had testified early in the investigation, before the call became known, so investigators did not ask him about it. Yadarola now considers Lista a possible suspect and said federal justice should examine whether he committed an offense linked to his official duties.

The information reached the court on Aug. 24, after the judge’s office repeated its request for Abalsamo’s call records. The original request sought calls and messages from Feb. 26, 2025, between 8:15 and 9:30 a.m., but Telecom mistakenly provided records from Feb. 26, 2026. The court discovered the error months later, when the case was already headed for closure.

within the period in which, according to the testimony of Principal Officer Flores Herbas of the Airport Security Police, the crew and passenger remained delayed beside the aircraft, and immediately before Abalsamo’s operational decision that they should not undergo any baggage control

· Pablo YadarolaThe judge described the timing of the call in his ruling.
About this summary

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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