Gianinna Maradona, daughter of Diego Armando Maradona, declared that she was convinced that there was a “plan” articulated by her father’s surroundings and medical team, not necessarily to kill him, but to keep him under control. The statement was made in an interview with some media during the trial in San Isidro of seven health professionals accused of fatal negligence related to the death of the Argentine idol, on November 25, 2020.
At 36, Gianinna directly pointed to figures close to Maradona, such as former lawyer and representative Matías Morla and former assistant Maximiliano Pomargo. Neither of the two is among those accused in this case, but both have just been sent to trial — on a date yet to be defined — for alleged fraudulent management of the trademarks associated with the Maradona name.
“I can’t correctly conceptualize this plan, the idea that they wanted to kill him. But did Morla want to take my father’s life in her hands? Of course,” he said. For her, there was someone “directing” this scheme, but they ended up losing control of the situation.
Convalescence at home and interest in gambling
Gianinna recalls that some of the accused convinced the family, in November 2020, that the only option after Maradona’s neurosurgery was recovery at home, and not psychiatric hospitalization. This alternative would have also allowed her dependencies to be treated, but would have required the supervision of a judge — something that, according to her, was not of interest to her close circle.
“It wasn’t convenient for my father to be admitted to psychiatry, because many things would fall apart for Morla,” he says. She recalls that Maradona had given the lawyer a power of attorney for commercial use of his name. “He had the signature, he could sign it as if he were his father.”
According to Gianinna, this power allowed Morla to control decisions and business, and the inner circle thought “all the time about the financial aspect, not about Dad’s health.” In her lengthy court statement two weeks earlier, she described a “total, horrible manipulation” of the family by medical staff.
The place chosen for convalescence — a large house in Tigre, north of Buenos Aires, but without adequate medical equipment and described by the prosecution as “devoid of everything” — became a central point in the process. For Gianinna, the seven accused “are all responsible, some to a greater degree than others.”
She especially points to Leopoldo Luque, Maradona’s personal doctor at the time, as the one who “managed everything” in the team. “It was the main voice,” he says. Still, he insists that everyone is responsible for what they did or didn’t do. “The nurse who should have examined him before leaving didn’t examine him, and neither did the nurse who arrived later.”
Fear, omissions and lonely death
Maradona died at the age of 60, victim of a cardiorespiratory arrest and pulmonary edema, according to reports, after hours of agony, alone in his bed in the residence rented for recovery. For Gianinna, everyone followed the same “directive line”, reinforcing her thesis that there was a plan.
She claims that the person who “pulled the strings” was Maximiliano Pomargo, Maradona’s former right-hand man and lawyer Morla’s brother-in-law. According to Gianinna, when her father’s health began to worsen, the team members “got scared”, as audios attached to the process reveal. “In the audios, you hear things like ‘I’m going to protect myself legally’. They never imagined that the prosecutor would act quickly, seize their phones, carry out searches.”
The seven defendants deny any responsibility and claim that Maradona died of natural causes. Each person relies on their specialty and their role within the team. They face between eight and 25 years in prison.
With AFP
