Prosecutors connect Placido Domingo to Argentinian crime ring

Opera star Placido Domingo is being connected to a crime ring that deals in sex trafficking and other illegal activities.

According to NPR, prosecutors in Argentina have audio recordings from wiretaps that they say prove that Domingo, 81, was engaged in communication with members of the Buenos Aires-based BA Group.

Parts of the recordings have been airing on Latin American television. One of them features a man speaking with a woman, telling her about plans to evade his representatives to meet her for a sexual encounter. 

Another recording has the same woman, who goes by the name Mendy, calling another man, who prosecutors say is alleged ringleader Juan Percowicz, telling him she made plans with the other man, whom she identified as Placido.

Argentinian authorities carried out 50 raids against the BA Group last week. They were allegedly using the name Buenos Aires Yoga School, and 19 people were arrested in the operations.

In 2019, Domingo faced allegations of sexual misconduct from 20 women who said they harassed, kissed, or groped them, in incidents said to have taken place as early as the 1980s. One singer, Angela Turner Wilson, said when she was 28 and starring opposite Domingo in a Washington Opera production of “Le Cid” from 1999-2000, reached down her dress and groped her breast before a performance.

The allegations eventually led Domingo to resign from his position as general director of the Los Angeles Opera.