Juan Percowicz was once an accountant with an peculiar facet pastime: educating self-help categories round Buenos Aires with a heavy dose of historical philosophy and New Age spiritualism. He was once successful and, with donations from his fans, he constructed a company referred to as Buenos Aires Yoga College, or BAYS.

For greater than 30 years, he ran the college, which promised non secular salvation via lectures and self-help categories.

However now, Mr. Percowicz, 85, and greater than a dozen BAYS participants are dealing with felony fees, accused of working a “intercourse cult,” now not a yoga faculty, that coerced a few of its feminine participants into prostitution and laundered the income in actual property.

Prosecutors say the group exploited and drugged a few of its feminine participants, forcing them to promote their our bodies and producing loads of hundreds of greenbacks per thirty days from shoppers in Argentina and the US. BAYS additionally ran a bootleg hospital the place some participants had been administered medication to urge extended sleep, now and again as a type of punishment, in line with prosecutors.

“Cults exist right here, however we’ve by no means noticed one who operated at this stage,” mentioned Ricardo Juri, the investigator who oversaw police raids on BAYS homes in August 2022.

The accusations towards BAYS surprised Argentina, but for many of us, in addition they felt eerily acquainted.

Within the Nineteen Nineties, Mr. Percowicz and his faculty first received notoriety after an Argentine circle of relatives accused the group of brainwashing their daughter. All through the investigation, some former participants talked of being pressured to paintings as “slaves” and mentioned the college promoted prostitution.

However that authentic case stalled within the courts. Argentina didn’t but have regulations on human trafficking or cash laundering, in line with investigators. The rustic’s justice gadget was once nonetheless being overhauled after the tip of the army dictatorship greater than a decade previous during which tens of hundreds of other people had been killed.

A 1999 State Division document mentioned Argentina’s judiciary was once “hampered through inordinate delays, procedural logjams, adjustments of judges, insufficient administrative give a boost to and incompetence.”

There additionally remained a lingering mistrust of presidency and the judicial gadget — and defenders of BAYS tapped into that, together with Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, an Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the Moms of the Plaza de Mayo, whose youngsters have been “disappeared” through the authoritarian regime. They accused the Argentine judiciary of corruption and human rights violations attached to the case.

Sooner or later, the case towards BAYS was once dropped.

Now, with up to date regulations, prosecutors are once more concentrated on Mr. Percowicz and his fans in a brand new investigation inspecting BAYS operations relationship again to 2004.

“The persons are the similar, the choices are the similar, the actions are identical, however there are two crucial regulations now with large consequences that limit the core actions those other people had been doing,” mentioned Ariel Lijo, a pass judgement on who oversaw the preliminary phases of the case. Mr. Lijo was once nominated for Argentina’s Splendid Court docket in March through President Javier Milei.

Within the 2022 raids on BAYS, investigators mentioned they discovered greater than $1 million in money, 5 bars of gold, stashes of pornographic movies, checkbooks from American banks and dossiers on rich folks, together with some who are living in the US. American government have cooperated within the investigation, in line with Argentine investigators.

The U.S. Justice Division declined to remark.

Prosecutors say that the seven ladies named as sufferers had been delivered to BAYS through their oldsters after they had been minors, or that they joined as younger ladies and had been sooner or later pressured into prostitution. However the ladies within the case have denied ever having intercourse in trade for cash, or being sufferers of any crime.

Protection attorneys for Mr. Percowicz and present participants of BAYS have denied all fees, arguing that nobody within the group was once exploited. As an alternative, they are saying that the accusers — whose identities are safe within the case — need revenge at the group for private causes.

“This can be a case of human trafficking with out sufferers of trafficking,” mentioned Jorge Daniel Pirozzo, a legal professional who represents Mr. Percowicz and 5 different BAYS participants. “It hasn’t been confirmed that anyone has been sexually exploited.”

Mr. Percowicz and BAYS participants declined interview requests.

Whilst prostitution in Argentina isn’t unlawful, selling or economically exploiting the follow of prostitution the usage of deception, abuse or intimidation is. The prosecutors say they intend to turn that the sufferers don’t acknowledge themselves as such as a result of Mr. Percowicz and his allies psychologically manipulated the ladies over years.

As each side get ready their arguments, the group continues to have outstanding allies, together with in the US.

In October 2022, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. despatched an e mail to Mr. Lijo, the pass judgement on, which was once reviewed through The New York Occasions. The message mentioned that BAYS participants had been “sufferers of brutal and egregious human rights violations through parts of the Argentine felony gadget.” It was once unclear why Mr. Jackson, 82, despatched the e-mail.

He didn’t reply to more than one requests for remark.

‘They Raised His Self-Esteem’

Caterina Sanfelice was once a hairstylist in her forties when a chum first invited her to a BAYS lecture round 1993. “It was once like going to a complicated café with an orator,” she mentioned.

Mr. Percowicz spoke of discovering interior energy, she remembers, hooking other people with guarantees of solutions within the subsequent consultation. Ms. Sanfelice mentioned she began going to the talks at least one time per week along with her circle of relatives.

Sooner or later, she mentioned, it turned into transparent one thing was once off. Ms. Sanfelice mentioned Mr. Percowicz advised her that “he felt like God.” His closest fans began calling him “angel” or “grasp.” Then, at a BAYS celebration, Ms. Sanfelice mentioned two ladies propositioned her husband whilst different participants undressed to organize for an orgy. She ran out of the construction.

When Ms. Sanfelice advised her husband she didn’t need to return, she mentioned, he responded that the college noticed in him what she didn’t see: a super architect.

“They raised his vainness,” she mentioned. “That’s when he began to really feel essential. And I turned into the witch.”

Ms. Sanfelice mentioned her husband, who may just now not be reached for remark, left her in 1993 and stayed concerned with BAYS. She mentioned she was once exasperated and felt like nobody believed her.

Then got here some validation: the primary felony case towards BAYS, which captured global consideration.

On the middle of it was once Maria Valeria Llamas, who was once 20 and jobless when a circle of relatives good friend presented to take her to a BAYS lecture in 1990.

“To start with we noticed it as one thing sure,” mentioned Martín Sommariva, Ms. Llamas’s part brother. “We went from a Valeria who didn’t cross out, who was once caught in her room the entire time, to this Valeria who were given at the bus and had an pastime in one thing.”

However over the following couple of years, the yoga faculty ate up her existence, her circle of relatives mentioned. Ms. Llamas broke up along with her boyfriend and misplaced contact with buddies. She stopped going to circle of relatives outings. She started running at a pharmacy run through BAYS participants.

Quickly after, her mom mentioned, she discovered Ms. Llamas have been burdened through the college to have an unlawful abortion. When her circle of relatives wondered her, Ms. Llamas responded that Mr. Percowicz was once “an immortal angel.”

The next day to come, two BAYS participants confirmed up on the space, escorted through cops, in line with the circle of relatives and courtroom data from the case. They mentioned they had been suing the oldsters for “illegal deprivation of liberty.” The police moved Ms. Llamas’s property into an condominium owned through BAYS, her circle of relatives mentioned. Ms. Llamas later accused her stepfather of sexually assaulting her, courtroom data display.

“All of sudden the arena got here crashing down on us,” recalled her mom, Elena. “We concept: What are we going to do now?”

No rape fees had been ever filed towards the members of the family. Ms. Llamas didn’t reply to requests for remark.

The circle of relatives filed a felony grievance in 1993, accusing the college of being a cult that had brainwashed their daughter.

The accusation ended up within the docket of Mariano Bergés, a tender pass judgement on beginning his profession. Beneath Argentina’s judiciary gadget on the time, judges may just each examine circumstances and oversee the courtroom court cases. As a part of the investigation, Mr. Bergés mentioned in an interview, he licensed a raid of the headquarters and a few of BAYS’s different homes.

He mentioned the raids discovered packing containers of letters that confirmed participants paying Mr. Percowicz for a better non secular rating within the group. This was once now not unlawful, however, blended with the testimony of former participants, it led investigators to imagine there was once criminal activity underway. Mr. Bergés then ordered wiretaps on Mr. Percowicz and his best deputies, which Mr. Bergés mentioned indicated a scheme to scouse borrow the belongings of a deceased BAYS member.

In depositions reviewed through The Occasions, a number of former BAYS participants later mentioned that Mr. Percowicz and his interior circle pressured more youthful fans to be “slaves” to raised rating participants, making them perform duties like home tasks with out pay. Former participants additionally mentioned that the group promoted prostitution, the depositions display, despite the fact that none mentioned that they had been prostituted themselves.

However with out human trafficking or cash laundering regulations in Argentina, Mr. Bergés mentioned, he needed to construct a case round fraud, promotion of prostitution and a flimsy fee referred to as “corruption of adults.”

In past due 1995, Mr. Bergés withdrew from the case after being threatened with impeachment through Argentina’s Congress. In an interview, he mentioned the Congress and Splendid Court docket, in addition to human-rights teams, burdened him to step down, pronouncing that his investigation ways, just like the wiretapping and raids, violated the suspects’ civil rights. He denies the accusations.

Out of doors his space, he mentioned, “The partitions had been plastered with posters and issues towards me.”

Via the mid-Nineteen Nineties, BAYS had opened wellness corporations and a basis in Chicago, Las Vegas and New York. It had received a name as an training middle for philosophy and wellness whose participants incorporated students, execs and musicians.

BAYS had additionally cultivated supporters within the U.S. Congress, despite the fact that it’s unclear how the lawmakers first turned into conscious about the group or whether or not any of them had any actual wisdom or connections to the crowd.

In Argentina, the felony case towards the group persevered to tug in the course of the courts. Greater than 50 congressional participants despatched letters to the rustic’s executive not easy the investigation be closed, in line with the Area file. (There’s no proof that any U.S. politicians had been participants of BAYS or investigated through Argentine officers.)

Edolphus Cities, a congressman representing a part of Brooklyn, mentioned in Area testimony that BAYS participants had been being burdened through Argentine judicial officers, have been unlawfully imprisoned and matter to antisemitism. Mr. Percowicz and a few of his best deputies are Jewish.

Mr. Cities, 89, retired in 2013 and didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Robert A. Underwood, a former congressman from Guam who signed a letter despatched to President Invoice Clinton calling for him to intrude, mentioned in an interview that such missives had been not unusual. “No person in point of fact places a large number of concept into it since you are signing letters at all times,” he mentioned.

Mr. Clinton, in his ultimate 12 months in workplace, answered to participants of Congress in September 1999 and mentioned that U.S. Embassy officers in Buenos Aires had “just lately reiterated to senior Argentine officers the significance of resolving this situation as temporarily as conceivable,” in line with a letter equipped to The Occasions through the Clinton Presidential Library.

The White Area’s written reaction to Congress “displays the level of President Clinton’s involvement on this,” mentioned Angel Ureña, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton.

In Argentina, the felony case towards BAYS was once sooner or later closed within the early 2000s without a convictions.

Seeking to Make a Billion Greenbacks

Over the following two decades, BAYS flourished, with little consideration from Argentine government. All through this era, Mr. Percowicz made transparent he was once within the trade of earning money.

“If what we needed to do right here was once write a e-book concerning the lifetime of Jesus, we wouldn’t be interested by the rest as opposed to the lifetime of Jesus,” Mr. Percowicz advised his fans in 2006 in a video received through investigators. “However what we’re seeking to do this is make a thousand million bucks, a thousand million bucks, goddamn it!”

Then, in 2021, BAYS bumped into new hassle.

Argentina’s federal public prosecutor’s workplace for trafficking and the exploitation of other people opened an investigation into the group.

Investigators tapped the telephones of Mr. Percowicz and a few of his allies, shooting conversations that, in line with prosecutors, display the paintings of managing a prostitution operation.

Transcripts filed in courtroom display that during one name, Mr. Percowicz is going over the logistics of arranging what investigators say was once a sexual stumble upon. In a separate recording, a BAYS supervisor tells Mr. Percowicz {that a} lady is bringing in simplest $6,000 a month, which isn’t sufficient cash, suggesting she wishes to usher in extra for the group.

The wiretaps additionally recorded conversations with a person whom prosecutors say is Plácido Domingo, some of the international’s most famed opera singers, who has confronted a lot of accusations of sexual harassment lately. In a single name, he speaks to a lady who prosecutors say was once a senior member of BAYS to talk about how she may just get to his Buenos Aires resort room with out being spotted.

Argentine prosecutors have now not introduced fees towards Mr. Domingo in connection to the BAYS case.

A spokesperson for Mr. Domingo mentioned in a commentary that the opera singer had now not been charged “and he’s totally unrelated to the investigation.”

Prosecutors mentioned that almost all of BAYS’s source of revenue got here from sex-trafficking actions, and was once then laundered into actual property in Argentina and the US, they usually estimated BAYS’s general belongings at just about $50 million as of December 2020.

Prosecutors say they’re assured that the proof and new regulations will allow them to convey Mr. Percowicz and different defendants to justice. The case is recently running its means in the course of the courts. No trial date has been set but.

For Pablo Salum, whose mom first introduced him to BAYS when he was once simplest 8, justice is already too past due. He left the group when he was once 12 and has change into estranged from his mom and sister, who stay BAYS participants.

“This may have ended two decades in the past,” he mentioned. “The whole thing that is occurring now should not have needed to occur. And I will even have recovered my circle of relatives.”

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting from Washington.