MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The prosecutor in the Maradona case says a crime occurred and the trial will not collapse

Deputy chief prosecutor for San Isidro Patricio Ferrari said on Thursday that the delivery of medical records belonging to Diego Armando Maradona's father, rather than the footballer's own, may constitute a criminal offence, and ruled out that the discovery will halt the trial over the star's death in November 2020.

“They deceived us, they committed a crime and now they want to bring down a trial just as it is ending,” he told Criminal Court No. 7 of San Isidro. “I regret to tell them it was of no use. They are not going to bring the trial down.” He argued this was “a continuing offence” that began on January 5, 2021, when the private health provider Swiss Medical sent the documentation to prosecutors.

The court, made up of judges Alberto Gaig, Pablo Rolón and Alberto Ortolani, granted the prosecution's request and ordered searches of Swiss Medical's offices and two facilities linked to the company: the Olivos Clinic, where the footballer was treated, and the Los Arcos Sanatorium, where his father had been admitted.

The irregularity emerged on Tuesday, when lawyers for Nancy Forlini, Swiss Medical's medical coordinator and one of the defendants, noted that the medical panel examining the circumstances of the death had reviewed tests belonging to the player's father, who died in June 2015 and shared his name. One analysis is dated May 3, 2015, when Maradona was coaching a team in Dubai. The documentation was labelled under Diego Armando Maradona's name but carried his father's membership and medical record numbers.

Ferrari targeted Nicolás D'Albora, Forlini's defence lawyer, whose firm has also represented Swiss Medical for a decade. “Only whoever set the trap can know where it is hidden,” he said. The lawyer denied any manoeuvre: he said his firm detected the error on Tuesday, attributed it to the company's laboratory department and said that if anyone altered documentation they would have to answer for it. He also questioned why neither prosecutors nor the experts had noticed for years. Diego Junior Maradona's lawyer requested that D'Albora be removed from the proceedings.

The medical panel's report, submitted in late April 2021, describes the conduct of doctors Leopoldo Luque and Agustina Cosachov as “inadequate, deficient and reckless,” and is a central plank of the prosecution case. Defence teams may seek to have it annulled. A lawyer for another defendant said the proceedings do not depend on that report, though its credibility has been damaged. None of the professionals on trial has been convicted.

The first trial, which began in March 2025, was annulled two months later after it emerged that one of the judges was taking part in a documentary about the proceedings.