Five years on from her death, Natacha Jaitt’s family seeks new investigation

Five years on since the controversial death of media personality Natacha Jaitt, some of the late star’s relatives are appealing for a new investigation into her death.

Doubts over Jaitt’s death at the age of 41 have flourished online given the unclear circumstances of her death.

Jaitt’s body was found naked on a bed at the Xanadú party salon in Tigre, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires City, on February 23, 2019. She had travelled there to meet five other individuals.

An autopsy later revealed that she died from a multi-organ failure due to drug use, namely cocaine, but her family have cast doubt over that conclusion. 

The late star’s brother, Ulises, insists her death was linked controversial allegations she made against various media personalities.

In comments made on the fifth anniversary of his sibling’s death, he claimed that Natacha had been involved with AFI, Argentina’s intelligence services.

"I am not going to go into much depth, it is a very delicate area," he said in an interview with Channel 9.

Natacha “met with people outside the house, I did not see who she met with – she wanted to protect me,” he continued.

"A lot of the information she didn't tell me, but she had been anticipating all this paedophilia that she was very angry about and denounced whenever she could on her Twitter," he said.

Asked if she “looked for information or received it,” Ulises said his sister “always handled good information.”

"I can't tell you everything I know because I don't know what could happen, that's all I can tell you. I am not afraid [of the AFI]. It is not easy to get involved with spies because many of us know how people who get involved with spies end up," he said.

Investigation update

Earlier this week, Jaitt family lawyer Yamil Castro Bianchi provided an update on the investigation and called for new prosecutors to be appointed to the case.

“Technically, what happened was we filed for a challenge. In a trial you have a judge, a sort of arbitrator, and one side of the court is the prosecution, the complainant or the aggrieved party and on the other side the defence,” he explained.

“In this case there is no defence, no-one has been indicted. And instead of playing for the prosecution’s team, we seemed to be against them for various matters. Then we asked the judge to remove all three prosecutors on different grounds, some individuals and some shared.”

Bianchi also revealed that the family wants the case to be reclassified as a potential femicide.

“We ask for this to be tried from a gender perspective as a femicide. The law establishes that when there are certain alarms, the case has to be investigated as such and Natacha met all of them: she had reported threats and abuses,” he informed.

“Natacha was the victim of an intelligence operation where she was asked to disclose certain information to attack someone due to matters of state intelligence,” claimed Bianchi, who said the case may be referred to federal courts.

Inside the iPad

Last year, more than four years after her death, investigators finally gained access to the iPad owned by Jaitt that she took with her on the night she died.

In July 2023, a report by a digital analysis unit carried out as part of the investigation concluded that the information contained on her tablet provided no information to support the thesis that the late TV presenter was murdered.

The finding was based on the investigation of 3,513 contacts on the device, the 1,125 chat messages across various apps, mainly WhatsApp, of which 19 had been deleted. 

A conversation between Natacha and Gonzalo Rigoni, owner of Xanadú, was found. In it, Jaitt says she will be late due to rain and asks for food to be ordered as she was hungry. 

Rigoni, responding that sushi was on its way, goes on to explain to a third person in the conversation that there is “blow” at the site – a reference to cocaine.

Despite the findings, the family claims they have been unable to gain full access to the iPad’s content.

“The expert examination is divided into two parts, one where all the data from the tablet were downloaded to a device, such as a disk; and the other where the material is analysed.

“They didn’t let us take part in the second stage … but then they didn’t give us the raw material either. That is, we received a partial report of the events, a sort of summary or overview they wrote,” said Bianchi.

Controversial claims

Natacha Jaitt was a well-known personality in Argentina, often for the wrong reasons. Known to have formerly been a drug user, those closest to her insisted that she was no longer using at the time she died.

Jaitt had previously worked as a model, actress, escort, reality TV star and radio presenter. Her public profile surged, however, in April, 2018, when she made a series of explosive allegations asserting that dozens of high-profile sports and entertainment personalities were involved in a child prostitution ring.

The claims, aired during television appearances and on social media, were hugely controversial. They came just days after investigations into alleged child abuse at major Argentine football clubs, including Independiente and River Plate, hit the headlines.

Prior to her death, Jaitt had expressed fears for her safety, at one point warning on Twitter that she could pay the ultimate price for revealing dirty information on Argentina’s rich and famous.

"Warning: I am not going to commit suicide, I am not going to take too much cocaine and drown in a bath, or shoot myself. So if this happens, it wasn't me. Save this tweet," she wrote in April, 2018.

Prosecutors investigating the case concluded last year that there was "no evidence of the involvement of third parties" in Jaitt's death.

– TIMES/NA