$938 million fraud in Argentine Navy salaries: 13 removed from service
Admiral Juan Carlos Romay ordered the removal of 13 Argentine Navy members following a criminal complaint alleging fraud in salary payments amounting to nearly $1 billion.
Navy scandal: 13 relieved of duty over million-dollar salary fraud
The head of the Argentine Navy, Admiral Juan Carlos Romay, ordered the suspension and immediate removal of 13 members of the naval force in connection with a criminal complaint alleging fraud in the processing of salary payments. According to perfil.com, the amount defrauded totals $938,574,300.25 net. The judicial filing was submitted by Navy Captain Carlos Alberto Castro Maggio, head of Financial Administration of the institution, to Federal Court No. 2, presided over by judge Sebastián Ramos, with the involvement of prosecutor Ramiro González.
The embezzlement was carried out systematically between July 2022 and January 2026 through manual alteration of transfer batches in the Salary System. It initially involves a universe of 23 people. The core of the operation centred on four civilians with no connection to the force, led by María del Carmen Prieto, spouse of the then Head of the Review Department, Navy Captain Ariel Atanasoff. In administrative proceedings, the officer himself acknowledged having executed the manoeuvres alone with the aim of providing economic benefits to his family and close associates.
The fraud mechanism
The criminal method operated in the financial underworld of the force, taking advantage of the opacity margins left by the monthly processing of more than 24,000 salary payments. According to an audit conducted by an interdisciplinary commission, it consisted of the manual and intentional modification of digital payment files after ordinary controls had been completed and before their final transmission to the Banco de la Nación Argentina.
In this way, non-existent supplements and duplicate allowances were injected. Once the banking batches were generated, the records were restored to their original values in the local system to prevent the irregular amounts from appearing in the receipts published on the Haberes-Web portal.
Accounting expert reports confirmed a total loss of $981,148,567.88, distributed through 645 irregular deposits made to 23 people between July 2022 and January 2026. Nearly half of that amount—44 per cent—went to four civilians with no connection to the naval force: María del Carmen Prieto, Damián Andrés Santana, Amalia Cristina Díaz and Natalia Carolina Yahia.
The complaint specifies that "among the beneficiaries, active and retired military personnel were identified, permanent and contracted civilian staff, currently retired civilian personnel, and four individuals who have no employment or functional relationship whatsoever with the Argentine Navy".
Captain Atanasoff's confession
When discovered by the Investigating Officer under the Regulations for Military Administrative Proceedings, Atanasoff assumed full responsibility for the manoeuvre. The judicial file preserves his administrative confession: "I decided the operations, the benefits and the amounts". As questioning progressed, the officer indicated that he executed them personally and that "no one participated with him in the adoption of such decisions". Regarding the motives for diverting funds to his entourage, he acknowledged acting with the sole purpose of "providing economic benefit to these individuals".
An institutional paradox
The criminal file also exposes an inconsistency in the initial deployment of internal inspections. When in February 2026 the first salary discrepancies emerged in five agents from the Review Department, naval authorities believed they were facing an involuntary payment processing error and those implicated returned the money.
As no evidence was detected linking the Head of the Department to the irregularities, the Financial Administration Directorate entrusted Captain Atanasoff himself with evaluating and implementing new independent control mechanisms to prevent a recurrence of the irregularities. In this way, the principal suspect in the manoeuvre operated as responsible for overseeing his own criminal system between March and August 2026, until the deepening of computer expert reports detected the spousal link with María del Carmen Prieto and his preventive removal was ordered.
The most serious case: the suspect's wife
Prieto's case is the most severe within the file. Not only does she feature as the largest individual beneficiary—she received more than 152 million pesos in 46 transfers—but the spousal relationship with Navy Captain Accountant Ariel Baltasar Atanasoff, identified as the architect of the operation, exposes a family connivance that weakens any line of defence based on ignorance of the manoeuvres.
Budget context
The eruption of the judicial scandal coincides with the release of indicators revealing that loan arrears affect the daily economy of one in three Argentine military personnel. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy has just sent to Congress the 2027 Budget proposal, which projects a naval investment of USD 3.5 billion in international credit operations, in addition to a reinforcement of $217.954 billion aimed at reactivating the Integrated Naval Base of Ushuaia.
Source: Google News AR — Crime