The sun had just risen when the Tesla left the road at 131mph. Its safety systems had been disabled, and the man sitting in the driver’s seat did not brake.
A few seconds later, at around 6.30am on 28 November 2024, the car smashed through three roadside signs before colliding with a cement mixer and coming to a halt. Gustavo Basso, a wealthy and well-known businessman, was found dead inside.
Beyond the small Uruguayan city of Florida, the land flattens into long, grassy plains, broken only by windmills, fencing and the occasional service station. It is quiet and pastoral, populated by cattle grazing in loose herds. Uruguay has roughly four cows for every human being — around 12 million in total.
More than 800,000 of them, at least on paper, belonged to Gustavo Basso.
At 66, Basso was the co-founder and public face of the country’s largest cattle investment company: Conexión Ganadera, or Livestock Connection. When news of his death reached the capital Montevideo later that morning, the reaction was one of disbelief. Politicians and business associates spoke of a trusted figure, a pillar of Uruguay’s agricultural economy. The death was widely described as a tragic accident.
It would not remain so for long.
Two months later, Uruguay’s Special Prosecutor for Money Laundering opened an investigation into Conexión Ganadera for fraud, money laundering, misappropriation of funds, falsification of documents and other crimes, with international links to countries including the UK and US.
What followed would become the largest financial scandal in the country’s history. When the final count was completed, only 80,000 of Conexión Ganadera’s cattle could be located. In other words, around 700,000 cows — almost 6% of Uruguay's reported cattle population — were missing.
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