Wednesday 07 July 2021
Was his death a crime?
Maradona lived in dire straits
Argentine soccer star Maradona died of a heart attack at the age of only 60. After years of alcohol and cocaine excesses, his early death came as no surprise to many. Still, investigators suspect that it was avoidable.
Diego Armando Maradona has been dead for over seven months, but the last hours of the Argentine football legend still preoccupy investigators. Was the world-class striker’s undoing at the age of only 60, or did greed, carelessness and medical sloppiness lead to his untimely death?
“If Diego had been treated right, in a different house and with a little more love, he would still be alive today,” said Maradona’s young son Diego Fernando’s lawyer, Mario Baudry, on the Argentine television channel TN. “With a minimal amount of care, he would still be alive.”
The public prosecutor’s office is also accusing the medical and nursing team of manslaughter. The investigators assume that they knew about the poor health of their patient and simply left him to his fate. In the past few weeks, Maradona’s personal physician Leopoldo Luque, his psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov and several nurses made their statements. If convicted, the suspect faces a prison sentence of up to 25 years.
“Diego is living capital”
The focus of the investigation is Maradona’s home care in a private residential complex north of Buenos Aires after a brain operation a few weeks before his death in November last year. Obviously, problems arose again and again, as can be seen from chat logs published in the Argentine media. Once Maradona vomited after a heavy dinner, and once he fell in his room.
Apparently he himself refused constant care by nurses, but on the other hand the doctors did not take warnings seriously and expressed themselves disparagingly about their patients. A new admission to a hospital was probably rejected for image reasons.
According to witness statements, the house in the San Andres district of Tigre on the delta of the Río Paraná is said to have been catastrophic. It is also questionable whether the rented house was even suitable for caring for a sick person. “Luque has nothing to blame. He was his doctor, but he was not responsible for home care,” said the neurosurgeon’s lawyer Julio Rivas after questioning his client at the prosecutor’s office in San Isidro last week.
Much indicates that Maradona recently surrounded herself with people who wanted to earn money with the image of the former superstar. “Diego is living capital and everyone is fighting for this capital,” said Maradona’s physiotherapist Nicolás Taffarel in a voice message. His lawyer Matías Morla, for example, markets the trademark rights to “Maradona”, “Diego”, “El Diez” (The Ten) and “La mano de Dios” (The Hand of God) through his company Sattvica SA.
To the stadium, although he could no longer walk
The wrong friends hid the bad health of the former top athlete by all means. Apparently they feared that contracts signed by him could otherwise be declared invalid. For example, those around him are said to have insisted that Maradona showed himself on his 60th birthday in the stadium of his club Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, although he could hardly walk and had to be supported by two companions.
Usually his doctors prepared him for public appearances with saline solutions and medication. On that day that didn’t help either. From his family, however, Maradona was apparently systematically shielded. His daughter Giannina publicly complained that she could hardly contact her father. She blamed lawyer Morla for the poor treatment of her father in the weeks and months before his death.
Maradona’s ex-girlfriend Verónica Ojeda also sees the real culprits for the early death of the 1986 world champion in the environment of lawyers, consultants, psychologists and doctors. “I want to see them all in prison,” said the mother of Maradona’s son Diego Fernando in a documentary by the television station TN.
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