The plot with which the Arab Emirates illegally appropriated land in Patagonia

The State of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has illegally appropriated huge tracts of land in the mountain and coastal regions of Río Negro since 2017, through a network of Argentine front men, shell companies, intertwined directorates and trusts that present a false appearance of legality to cover up a foreign enclave, in a plot of corporate and administrative maneuvers that could only be carried out with the endorsement and complicity of the provincial government (see box).

Through these maneuvers, the UAE acquired 30,000 hectares of Rio Negro’s Atlantic coast where it set up a complex of mansions protected by private security, internal roads, a heliport, a hangar for large aircraft and a 2.5 kilometer runway, greater in length than the Metropolitan Airport. In the Cordillera he managed to capture just over 20 thousand hectares in two blocks of virgin mountain with native forests, where wildlife reigns in an environment of lagoons, water sources, glaciers and summer pastures in the heights. This foreign enclave alone totals 50 thousand hectares, equivalent to 2.5 times the city of Buenos Aires.

The landing of Emirati capital was an open secret in the region, with details until now unraveled by Neuquén journalist Susana Lara. But everything was brutally exposed last Tuesday the 7th, during a trial that he lost against the Mapuche weichafe Soledad Cayunao, when the former Santa Fe polo player Hugo Barabucci publicly confessed in the hearing that he had bought 20 thousand hectares on Carreras Hill with two million dollars gifted by the Emirati government, of which he was a senior employee in a state polo club.

Barabucci’s confession blew up the Matrix and became the starting point that allowed Argentine Weather delve into public and private, national and provincial documents (some still in the process of being re-checked) to begin to establish the corporate and administrative fabric of the foreignization process, which still has unexplored territories.

According to the papers he accessed Timeit all began on March 14, 2017 when the deed was signed by which Barabucci paid $2,050,175 for three tracts of land for a total of 19,269 hectares in the Cordillera, at a rate of $106 per hectare. He bought it from businessman Marcelo Mindlin, who had acquired them in 2009 for $20.75 each.

At the same time, according to a meticulous follow-up of the Official Gazette (BORA), on September 18 of the same year, the company Manzil SA was created in another notary office, with a share capital of 100 thousand pesos and only two key shareholders and directors in the process to come: the veteran Jorge Daniel Ortiz and the young Ignacio Petrocchi Massuh. “Manzil” is an Arabic term that means “dwelling” or “place of rest”, and also one of the seven parts into which the Quran, the sacred text of Islam, is divided.

Just 10 days later, on September 28, the Gengis Real State company was founded in the same notary office, with a share capital also of 100 thousand pesos and which is already giving away surprises. Its shareholders are Hugo Barabucci (49% Class B shares) and Manzil SA (51% Class A shares). And there is more: the president and main director of Gengis is Jorge Daniel Ortiz, accompanied as second director by his son Ignacio Jorge Ortiz Freuler, and as substitute director Hugo Barabucci himself. This creation was just published in BORA on December 13.

In the middle of the judicial process, on January 19, 2018, the deed of creation of the Amaike trust was signed, which would in fact become the new owner of the lands in question, and which contained within itself the administrative concealment that illegally placed the property in the hands of the UAE Government.

Amaike has two “trustees (contributors of assets)” who are Hugo Barabucci with the land and Manzil SA with nothing. According to the deed, Manzil only provides his name. A trust has two other roles, that of “Beneficiary” and the “Trustee”, who are the ones who receive the financial benefits of the trust during its existence, and who will receive ownership of all the assets after its termination. In Amaike, in both cases it is the Genghis Real State company. The “trustee”, that is, the administrator of Amaike, is none other than Ignacio Petrocchi Massuh, who is the shareholder of Manzil, which is the controlling company of Gengis, which is the beneficiary and trustee of Amaike.

The process definitively closes when in the following months a gradual increase in share capital takes place within Manzil that shifts the ownership of the firm towards prominent Emirati citizens, despite maintaining the same directors, clearly acting as front men.

The process begins on December 28, 2018 when Manzil’s share capital increases from 100 thousand to 16,620,000 pesos. This change was only made public in the BORA in April 2019. A second increase in share capital on December 27, 2019 already moves the ammeter of the maneuver: it goes from 16 million to 25,406,917 pesos and determines the replacement of Ortiz and Petrocchi Massuh as shareholders, by Emirati citizens Matar Suhail Alyabhouni Aldhaeri and Osama Hussein Saleh Hussein Alahdaly, with 0.3% and 99.7%, respectively. This change was only published in the BORA on March 14, 2022.

A second share change takes place on December 20, 2021 but is only published in the BORA in October 2025. It is another capital increase, from 25.4 to 35,406,917 pesos that leaves Osama Hussein with 99.78% of the shares and Matar Suhail with 0.22% testimonial and control.

In short, Matar Suhail and Osama Hussein control Manzil SA, which controls Genghis Real State, which is the beneficiary and trustee of Amaike, which was formed with the lands that the front man Hugo Barabucchi bought with the two million dollars that his boss, the emir of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahayan, gave him, who came to hide in El Foyel when his allies the United States and Israel began the attack against Iran.

The governor of Río Negro, Alberto Weretilneck, assures that all this is absolutely natural and legal.

Matar Suhail Alyabhouni Aldhaeri and Osama Hussein Saleh Hussein Alahdaly are not minor figures in the political power structure of the hereditary emir-dominated absolute monarchy that rules the United Arab Emirates. Matar Suhail is a general retired from the Armed Forces after 25 years of service, who currently presides over the Federal National Council of the UAE, a kind of Parliament with members appointed by the seven emirs that make up the country.

Matar Suhail also chairs the largest national public company, the Emirates Stallions Group (ESG), with direct operations in 40 countries in areas ranging from agriculture to construction. Precisely, through a subsidiary of ESG), the Real Architect Project Management (RAPM), former general Matar Suhail illegally built five mansion complexes in Río Negro, which are Bahía Dorada (on the coast), Villa Extancia, Hunting Lodge, Rockhouse and Las Marías, in the Cordillera. He also renovated and expanded the center of the Tornero ranch, an old family originally from El Bolsón.

Manzil’s other shareholder, Osama Hussein Saleh Hussein Alahdaly, is a member of the most intimate personal environment of Emir Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahayan, who in addition to being the heir of Abu Dhabi is the president of the autocratic Government of the UAE and commander in chief of its Armed Forces. Osama Hussein is one of his most trusted operators, so much so that he politically survived a scandal in which he was the protagonist when US intelligence revealed that he used the Tok-Tok communications platform, which was promoted by his protector’s government, as an espionage instrument.

Who also survived the judicial conflicts, but in Argentina, was Hugo Barabucchi. Sources from the Palace of Courts revealed to Tiempo Argentino that the Emirati front man was under judicial process for years in a mega case of 45 defendants for smuggling that was being processed in the National Economic Criminal Court 3 of Buenos Aires, in charge of Judge Rafael Caputo. The 34 people and 11 companies that were charged in the mega case, all linked to the equine field, such as farms, breeders, geneticists and horse dealers, were dismissed “due to extinction of the criminal action” in the case that was declared “extinct due to prescription of the criminal action.” That is, because the trial time exceeded without being able to prove whether they were innocent or guilty.