Cerimedo’s Phone Unveils Major Investigative Breakthrough: What It Reveals About Operations and Connections in Chile

Original article: El celular de Cerimedo abre una caja de Pandora: ¿qué puede revelar sobre sus operaciones y vínculos en Chile?

The contents of Fernando Cerimedo’s mobile phone have opened a Pandora’s box within the judicial framework surrounding the far-right political operator, revealing transnational implications. The disclosure of codes linked to a network of digital wallets that moved $132 million raises urgent questions about his operations and connections, particularly in Chile, where the Argentine consultant had a significant political and business presence.

Bolivian Senator Leonardo Roca, from Alianza Libre (center-right), has been pivotal in uncovering this new facet of the case, which complicates the situation for the so-called “king of trolls”, currently detained in the South American country. He is facing four charges, including attempted femicide against his ex-partner Nadia Beller, money laundering, domestic violence, and alleged support to drug trafficking flights.

The senator indicated that through meticulous tracking of information extracted from Cerimedo’s device, he identified a series of codes that, according to his analysis, correspond to a ‘cold wallet’, a storage method for cryptocurrency that is not connected to the internet. This finding stemmed from an official report by the Forensic Investigations Institute (IDIF), which included images and text messages from August 12 and 13 featuring these codes.

The nature of such a wallet, which operates as a removable storage device, makes it an ideal tool for the discreet transfer of large sums of money globally, without raising suspicion at border controls.

“The Public Ministry performed the extraction of Mr. Cerimedo’s phone and presented an image from August 13 showing a text message… next to that message was another indicating ‘Room 3 of the Hearing, Adrián Lema.’ Below that, there was another text note from August 12 containing a series of codes. I began to investigate those codes, and they belonged to a cold wallet,” Roca explained to the cited media outlet.

“A ‘cold wallet’ is akin to a USB drive that stores data; in this case, it’s money. It acts as a wallet that can be transferred anywhere in the world and pass through any airport without raising any suspicion. One can carry anywhere from $100 to billions in data and unload it anywhere internationally. It’s a means of transport that is currently trending for money laundering,” he added.

The senator’s investigation did not end with identifying the wallet; he delved into the digital trails left by every transaction recorded on the blockchain. The analysis of this ‘cold wallet’s’ movements revealed that, over the last six months, transactions totaling $44,100 were recorded, across 46 different destinations. Despite the current balance of just $9.33 in this account, the significance of this discovery lies in its role as a ‘fundraiser’, a node in the crypto ecosystem that collects funds from multiple smaller accounts to then redirect them to larger targets.

Tracing the accounts that funded Cerimedo’s wallet led Roca to uncover a large-scale financial web, revealing that the funds were channeled into 10 specific addresses, and deeper investigation uncovered accounts handling staggering sums, including one that holds $132 million. These accounts, known as ‘whales’ in crypto terminology due to their ability to accumulate and move large capital, raise a multitude of questions regarding the source of these resources and their potential connections to Cerimedo’s activities in Latin America, where he is known as an advisor to far-right figures like Javier Milei in Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia, and Nasry Asfura in Honduras.

“This wallet under Mr. Cerimedo’s control appears to be a digital warehouse for accumulating money, intended for transit to another location with greater financial movement. Those amounts received were subsequently transferred to a series of accounts identified in this report, which are ten linked accounts where more than $132 million has been concentrated over the past six months,” he suggested.

“The accounts sending money to that wallet associated with Cerimedo include figures of $9.581 billion, $4 billion, $1.7 billion, $1 billion, $975 million, and so forth. These are accounts managing significant sums of money,” he stressed.

For Senator Roca, the existence of these transactions and the identification of a ‘whale’ as the final destination should be immediately integrated into the investigation regarding money laundering allegations already facing the Argentine consultant in Bolivia.

He highlighted that this discovery must be analyzed through international treaties against money laundering. In this regard, he announced that he would be presenting a report to the prosecutor handling the case in La Paz, formalizing his adherence to the complaint and providing all gathered evidence to identify the owners of these substantial accounts.

“I request an investigation as soon as possible. We will work on two fronts: with the prosecutor’s office and we will also pursue a quicker route through the formation of a special investigative commission in the national Senate, which has a 48-hour timeline to issue its corresponding report,” he indicated.

Cerimedo’s Connections with Chile

The scenario unfolding suggests a complex network of financial operations that now must be unraveled by Bolivian authorities. The underlying question raised by this discovery, which echoes in Chile, is whether these substantial transactions are related to the political and business activities Cerimedo engaged in within the country.

Through the company Numen Spa, established by his Chilean partner, attorney Enrique García Arancibia, the Argentine consultant was contracted by the “Casa Común,” a campaign for Rejection in 2020, based in Vitacura, led by former vice president of La Polar and Isapre Colmena and ex-congressman of the National Libertarian Party, Gonzalo de la Carrera, along with former president of Codelco (2010-2014), Gerardo Jofré, and other business figures linked with the right and far-right.

Within this organization, Cerimedo crossed paths with the current head of advisors to the Segundo Piso of La Moneda, Alejandro Irarrázaval, the current head of the Communications Secretariat (Secom), Felipe Costabal, known as “Yeti,” and Ignacio Dülger, a former advisor and former metropolitan regional councilor, whose primary task was to work on the campaigns favoring the Rejection option, for both the preliminary and final plebiscites at that time.

During his work, he employed a communication strategy based on the use of fake accounts and trolls to manipulate algorithms, position content, and influence public opinion in our country.

“Last year, I spent my time traveling because I was working on the campaign against the proposed new Constitution in Chile,” the Argentine consultant stated in May 2023 to Infobae, who is responsible for multiple campaigns of defamation and fake news on social media, and is the founder and shareholder of La Derecha Diario, which operates portals in Argentina, Mexico, the United States, Israel, Uruguay, and Ecuador.

In that interview, he acknowledged that he managed nearly 50,000 artificially created accounts solely for the southern nation, in addition to others used in Chile.

The revelation of these connections has had political repercussions, prompting the opposition to request formal explanations. Deputies Jaime Araya, Daniel Manochehri, and Juan Santana have officially requested clarifications from Servel and La Moneda to clarify the links between Numen and presidential advisors.

In the same vein, parliamentarians such as Jaime Araya (Ind-PPD) and José Montalva (PPF) demanded the establishment of a Special Investigative Commission in Congress and responses from officials in the administration of José Antonio Kast regarding potential ties to the political operator.