Alberto Samid, the businessman known in Argentina as the “King of Meat.”
Argentina’s Federal Criminal Court of Cassation has rejected an extraordinary appeal filed by the Customs Collection and Control Agency (ARCA), leaving in place a lower-court ruling that extinguished the criminal action for alleged tax evasion against meat businessman Alberto Samid and his partner José María Suárez. With the appeal declared inadmissible, the dispute over whether the case could be taken to the Supreme Court through this route is effectively closed.
The case centered on alleged irregularities tied to El Fuego y El Agua S.A., a meatpacking firm in which Samid and Suárez were partners. Investigators alleged the company evaded Value Added Tax (VAT) and Income Tax through false tax filings and also retained amounts that should have been withheld and transferred to the tax authority.
How the prosecution was extinguished
The proceedings had reached Federal Oral Criminal Court No. 3 in San Martín. In October, that court applied the tax regularization regime established by Law 27,743, which allows certain tax-related criminal prosecutions to be extinguished when the underlying debt is regularized and paid under specific conditions, as long as there is no final judgment at the time of payment. The court concluded those conditions were met and dismissed the charges against both defendants.
ARCA, acting as the plaintiff, attempted to keep the prosecution alive. After its cassation challenge failed, the agency pursued an extraordinary federal appeal seeking Supreme Court review.
ARCA, Argentina’s Customs Collection and Control Agency, which sought to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Why Cassation rejected ARCA’s appeal
Chamber IV of the Federal Court of Cassation—Judges Javier Carbajo, Mariano Borinsky, and Gustavo Hornos—issued the ruling. By majority vote, the court held that ARCA’s appeal did not meet the formal requirements needed to reach the Supreme Court, including directly refuting the reasoning of the challenged decision and showing a relevant federal question.
Judge Gustavo Hornos dissented, arguing that the tax agency’s filing should be admitted because it raised issues tied to constitutional guarantees, including due process. The majority disagreed and declared the appeal inadmissible, leaving the oral court’s dismissal intact.
The ruling also situates the outcome within the broader framework of Law 27,743, enacted in July 2024, which introduced a mechanism to regularize and fully pay tax, customs, and social security debts. Under that regime, once the debt included in the plan is paid and other requirements are met, criminal prosecution for certain tax offenses can be extinguished if a final judgment has not yet been issued.
Samid, a well-known figure in Argentina’s meat industry, was previously convicted in 2019 in a separate case involving an illicit association linked to tax evasion. In that earlier case, he fled Argentina and was later arrested in Belize before being extradited back to serve his sentence.
