Corporate Mafia - "Business is business"

     Where there is a market concentrated in a few, usually a mafia operates. This is indisputable, no one allows competition if they have the resources to crush it. Last year, in one of the branches of the COTO Supermarket in Barrio de Caballito, an arsenal of large caliber weapons was found in the company's warehouses.

     They found 200 grenades, 40 gas projectiles, 27 firearms, pepper spray, 4000 ammunition, a silencer, 14 bulletproof vests, 22 helmets and some other objects. I think it deserves to be classified as an arsenal, we are talking about an establishment that sells food and a handful of electrical appliances.

Fuente

Fuente

Fuente

     The COTO supermarket is one of the few chains in Argentina. Where there is a limited oligopoly, which handles the relative prices of food and has extraordinary profit margins compared to other countries.

     Owner Alfredo Coto and his son were inhibited for life from carrying weapons. It also did not help that some of the weapons found had their serial numbers erased and some others were denounced with an arrest warrant. We already have three crimes, illegal carrying, erasing the identification and finally the weapons reported with an arrest warrant. Each crime averages 3 to 5 years in prison.

     Some were identified as prefectural weapons and police, the security forces always involved in dark matters. They were summoned to testify as commissioners and chiefs. There were also some weapons that had a legitimate origin. We are dealing with a case of great magnitude that was ignored by the media and only a few small ones raised the news.

     Today, justice fortunately won a victory. The owner and son were prosecuted, and prisons can be effective. Judge Ramos is in charge of the process, the COTOs are going to appeal to higher instances, but the evidence is overwhelming and the possibilities are very few.