BUENOS AIRES — Juan Percowicz was an accountant who also taught self-help classes in Buenos Aires. He was a success and, with donations from his followers, he built an organization known as Buenos Aires Yoga School or BAYS.
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For more than 30 years he operated the school, which promised spiritual salvation through lectures and self-improvement classes.
But now, Percowicz, 85, and more than a dozen BAYS members face criminal chargesaccused of leading a “sex sect” that He forced some of his students into prostitution and laundered real estate profits.
Prosecutors say the organization exploited and drugged some female students, forcing them to sell their bodies and generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from clients in Argentina and the United States.
“There are cults here, but we have never seen one that operated at this level,” said Ricardo Juri, the investigator who oversaw police raids on BAYS properties in August 2022.
In the 1990s, Percowicz and her school first gained notoriety after an Argentine family accused the organization of brainwashing their then-20-year-old daughter, María Valeria Llamas. During the investigation, some former members spoke of being forced to work as “slaves” and said the school promoted prostitution.
But that case stalled in court. Argentina still had no laws regarding human trafficking or money laundering, researchers say. The country’s justice system was still being reformed after the end of the military dictatorship more than a decade earlier, in which tens of thousands of people were murdered.
Distrust of the government and the judicial system also persisted—and was exploited by BAYS advocates, including Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Argentine winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose children had been “disappeared.” by the authoritarian regime. They accused the Argentine judiciary of corruption and human rights violations related to the case.
Eventually, the case against BAYS was dropped.
Now, with updated laws, prosecutors are again targeting Percowicz and his followers in a new investigation examining BAYS operations dating back to 2004.
In the 2022 raids at BAYS, investigators said they found more than $1 million in cash, five gold bars, pornographic films, U.S. bank check books and files on wealthy people, including some who live in the United States.
Prosecutors say the seven women named as victims were either brought to BAYS by their parents when they were minors, or they joined when they were young and were eventually forced into prostitution. But these women have denied having had sex for money or having been victims of any crime.
Defense attorneys for Percowicz and current BAYS members have denied all charges. They say the accusers — whose identities are protected in the case — want revenge against the organization for personal reasons.
“This is a human trafficking case without trafficking victims,” said Jorge Daniel Pirozzo, a lawyer representing Percowicz and five other BAYS members.
While prostitution in Argentina is not illegal, promoting or economically exploiting prostitution through deception, abuse or intimidation is. Prosecutors say they intend to show that the victims do not recognize themselves as such because Percowicz and his allies psychologically manipulated the women for years.
Prosecutors said the majority of BAYS’ proceeds came from sex trafficking activities and were laundered into real estate in Argentina and the United States. They estimated that BAYS’ total assets were almost $50 million as of December 2020.
Prosecutors say they are confident that evidence and new laws will allow them to bring Percowicz and other defendants to justice. The case is currently in court. No trial date has been set.
For Pablo Salum, whose mother first took him to BAYS when he was 8 years old, justice comes too late. He left the organization when he was 12 and has become estranged from his mother and his sister, who remain members of BAYS.
“This could have ended 20 years ago,” he said. “Everything that is happening now should not have happened. And maybe I would have even gotten my family back.”
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