Federal judge Ariel Lijo summoned Jonathan and Emmanuel Kovalivker, the owners of the drug distributor Suizo Argentina, to be questioned as suspects on Thursday, October 29, in the corruption case over purchases by the national disability agency, and ordered their assets frozen.
The order, signed Thursday, summons 36 people to appear in person at the Comodoro Py federal courthouse in Buenos Aires. Three people already questioned in the case will also expand their statements, for a schedule of 39 hearings through November 26. Lijo said the evidence reached the level of suspicion that allows him to call people in as suspects, the step before deciding whether to charge them.
The freeze covers the registered property of the 36, including real estate, vehicles, aircraft and ships. Lijo called it “suitable, necessary and proportionate” to preserve assets that could be forfeited or used to pay damages.
Prosecutors Franco Picardi and Sergio Rodríguez accuse Suizo Argentina of taking control of the agency’s purchasing between May 2024 and August 2025, setting prices and arranging with 14 other distributors to split state contracts. They say the company received awards worth 137,118 million pesos (about US$90 million), almost 30% of the agency’s spending in that period, and name the brothers as leader and member of an illicit association to defraud the state.
Prosecutors cite a multiple sclerosis drug that Suizo Argentina bought for 92,000 pesos a unit and allegedly sold to the agency for between 3.87 million and 4.06 million pesos a unit. A court kept the bribery case against the agency’s former director on course for trial in September. The Kovalivkers are the first to appear, on October 29.