With a mega operation that included some 50 simultaneous raids and 24 detainees, the Federal Police struck last night an international sect, accused of reducing people to servitudetrafficking, sexual exploitation and money laundering, a practice that would have been in the country for more than three decades.
This is the so-called Fundación Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires, which had its headquarters on Estado de Israel street at 4400, but branches even in the United States. According to the investigation carried out by the court, the sect peddled a philosophy about ending “the evils of AIDS and drugs” and promised “the development of happiness”screens from which they captured new followers.
Among the 24 arrested, some 19 would be members of the criminal gang, including the entire leadership of the organization in the country. They are accused of human trafficking aggravated by coercion, theft, money laundering, illicit association, illegal practice of medicine, irregular sale of medicines and influence peddling.
Also more than a million dollars were seizedalmost 2 million pesos, pounds sterling, euros, pornographic material, sex toys, property titles and a Ford Bronco truck in an operation that took place at the Villa Crespo headquarters, in the Belgrano and Flores neighborhoods, a country North Zone and also at the Ezeiza International Airport.
There fell three members of the organization who were preparing to leave the country to carry out a series of supposed cures to the United States, a practice that was habitual. In the yapa bags, the Police found pills and medicines that were being prepared to be smuggled.
The suitcase full of pills and medical supplies with which they traveled to the US
How the organization worked
As confirmed by judicial sources Clarionthe “Operation Secta Sociedad Anónima” began almost a year ago due to a complaint from the Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons Prosecutor’s Office (PROTEX), which fell to the Federal Court No. 4 in charge of Ariel Lijo.
There they began by investigating the firm BA Group, a coaching consultancy that presented itself as “a systematized philosophical learning space” aimed at the client’s objectives, whether they are individuals or companies. It was one of the companies behind the Yoga School, which has connections with the business sector, health and even politics. The investigation found a macabre operation, which borders on exploitation and even slavery.
It is that the School was dedicated to recruiting people to, in some cases, incorporate them into the organization and reduce them to a situation of servitude. In other cases, offer them some of the supposedly medical treatments that they do in their clinics. None was enabled.
In addition to fundraising purposes, the clinic also attracted influence that could provide cover for its leaders. It is estimated that some 170 people participated in the organization, which had some 1,500 students.
Among the alleged treatments offered, one of the most perverse was the so-called “Sleep Cure”, a treatment that consisted of a mix of pills and alcohol, which could last for several days and was intended to numb and stun people. For new patients, it was sold as a treatment to combat drug addiction, which ultimately served ─in many cases─ as a gateway for co-optation within the organization through coercion.
One of the raids on the Villa Crespo sect. (Photo PFA)
For the members who were already inside, it worked as a punishment, a tool to break the will, leaving them pilled for several days. The objective? Keep them within the organization.
These sleep treatments were offered in different locations in the Capital and also in the United States and Uruguay. However, the false doctors always insisted that patients from all over the world come to be treated at the headquarters in Villa Crespo. The objective was to be able to isolate them from their relatives and begin the maneuvers to steal them and begin to extract money from them.
The building in the State of Israel where the raids were carried out. (Photos Martin Bonetto)
Another of the most aberrant practices was the sexual exploitation of the students who were within the sect. It is that according to the investigation, they were sent to look for men with a lot of money, or who have some influential position or position, which can serve the ends of the organization. They were sent on a circuit that included bars and hotel lobbies.
According to the investigation, the profits obtained from the exploitation of all the people captured later entered the legal circuit through a series of screens created abroad. They even had a “bench” of their own, with which they planned to buy a building for almost a million and a half dollars in the short term.according to wiretaps.
Members of the sect paid a monthly membership, which was called “ceremonial”. They also collected from the different talks, reading classes, training and other types of activities. Many of them were hired by companies and also by state, provincial and municipal agencies.
Another source of financing was real estate, through the transfer of properties by recruited members, who disposed of their assets under the influence of the organization’s leaders. In 1996 one of the organization’s leaders had been prosecuted for “qualified theft” for ransacking the house of one of the members when he died.
The complaint of one of the survivors
For activist Pablo Salum, the fall of the sect was a moment he waited a lifetime for. His case is paradigmatic: his family was one of the first to be co-opted by the organization. He was able to escape when he was 13 years old, but he left alone: his mother and sister remained inside. Since then, he undertook a personal crusade to denounce what was happening there.
He was one of the main witnesses in a trial that began against the sect in the 1990s, which ultimately ended in nothing. Since then, he founded the NGO LibreMentes and actively militates in social networks to combat different sects, false spiritual leaders and other gurus who offer miraculous cures.
The news of the fall of the sect caught him working: He was in a streaming denouncing another organization. “I went from having a beautiful family, I went to have nothing. They left us totally destroyed,” he said this Saturday in a chat with TN.
“I have 30 years of fighting in this. Here is the boy whose life you ruinedHe had lost hope of justice. This is the ending I was waiting for my story. I would love for my family to know that I am waiting for them, “she closed.
It is now justice that has the story of Pablo and other victims in its hands.