Daughter says Maradona died after carers' plan 'went out of control'

Diego Maradona’s entourage and medical team had a plan for the Argentine football star but things “went out of control” in the lead-up to his death, his daughter Gianinna said in an interview this week.

Maradona, regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time, died in November 2020 at the age of 60 of heart failure and acute pulmonary edema — a condition where fluid accumulates in the lungs — while recovering at home from surgery for a brain clot.

“There was definitely a plan and someone was in charge of it, but things got out of their control,” Gianinna, 36, told news outlets including AFP.

She spoke on the sidelines of the trial in San Isidro of seven medical workers — including a neurosurgeon, a psychiatrist and a nurse — whom prosecutors accuse of gross negligence over Maradona’s death.

The seven deny responsibility and say the star of the 1986 World Cup died of natural causes. They face prison terms of between eight and 25 years if convicted.

Gianinna blamed Maradona’s former lawyer and representative Matias Morla and his former assistant Maximiliano Pomargo.

The pair are not among the accused in the negligence case, but will stand trial for alleged fraudulent management of Maradona’s brands. The trial date has yet to be announced.

“I can’t quite bring myself to think through this plan, that they wanted to kill him. Did Morla want to have my father’s life in his hands? Surely,” Gianinna said.

‘Power’ over Maradona 

Gianinna said some of the defendants convinced the family in November 2020 that Maradona could only recover from neurosurgery at home, instead of being admitted to a psychiatric clinic.

The clinic could have treated the football star’s addictions but, if Maradona refused to be admitted, he would likely have been placed under a judge’s guardianship.

“It didn’t suit them for my father to be hospitalized in psychiatry, because a whole lot of things would have collapsed for Morla,” Gianinna said.

She said Maradona had given Morla power of attorney in the commercial use of his name.

“He was the one who had the signature, who could sign as if he were my dad,” she said.

“He had the power of having Maradona (under his control) and did whatever he wanted with that power,” Gianinna said, adding that those in his closest circle were “always thinking about the money side of things, not about dad’s health.”

Gianinna testified at the trial last month and denounced Maradona’s “total manipulation.”

Prosecutors said the footballer was kept in a house in the northern Buenos Aires suburb of Tigre without appropriate medical equipment and sanitation, and that carers committed “all kinds of omissions” that resulted in “cruel” conditions.

Gianinna said she believed the seven defendants were “all responsible, some to a greater degree than others.” She singled out Maradona’s then-personal physician Leopoldo Luque as the “main voice” who managed his team.

However, she said each defendant bore personal responsibility.

“The nurse who was supposed to check on him before leaving didn’t check on him, and the nurse who arrived didn’t check on him either,” she said.

‘They were afraid’ 

Expert reports say that Maradona died after several hours of agony, alone on the bed in the house rented for his recovery.

Gianinna said that the medical team members “all had a common line and they all followed it.”

She said Pomargo, Maradona’s former right-hand man and Morla’s brother-in-law, was “the one who was pulling the strings a bit.”

When Maradona’s condition worsened, the carers “were afraid, because in the audio messages (used in the trial), you hear things like: ‘I’m covering myself legally,'” Gianinna said.

“They never imagined that the prosecutor’s office would act quickly, seize their phones, raid their homes,” she said.