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Footage has emerged of Diego Maradona in bed with a 16-year-old girl who has accused the footballing legend of locking her in a hotel, getting her hooked on cocaine and bullying her into getting a boob job.
In the intimate videos taken in 2000 at the start of their alleged three-year relationship, Mavys Alvarez, from Cuba is seen looking uncomfortable.
The pair were later seen in bed with Maradona holding the camera in his hands.
Other clips, obtained by Spanish-language news outlet Infobae, show Maradona’s associates in the room.
The allegations have prompted a human trafficking case against the late icon’s entourage.
Ms Alvarez, now 37, recently broke her silence to claim she was groomed as a teenager and flown to Argentina from her native Cuba without her parents permission when she was just 16. Maradona was aged 40 at the time.
The star was in Cuba for a drugs rehabilitation programme and allegedly met the teenager at a hotel resort in Varadero after one of his associates convinced her to join the Hand of God star.
She said: ‘He spent more than an hour convincing me that it was important to help Diego, that he was a world famous figure, a friend of Cuba, and he was depressed.
‘And finally, I accepted.’
Maradona then moved her into an apartment in Havana before introducing her to drugs, parties and even Cuban leader Fidel Castro who called her a beautiful girl, she claims.
The claims have led to a complaint being filed with the Prosecutor’s Office for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons in Argentina, and Ms Alvarez has joined as a plaintiff.
Federal judge Julián Ercolini will investigate whether Maradona’s associates trafficked the girl without parental consent. She has also called for immigration officials to face investigation after they allowed her to enter Argentina.
She said she was taken to Buenos Aires in 2001 and was kept in a hotel for three months and ‘pressured’ into having breast enlargement.
‘I was not allowed to go out alone … always having people in charge of my stay there. During the entirety of my stay in [Argentina],’ she said in a recent court filing.
Their relationship was kept secret for so long out of fears that her family who still live in Cuba would be persecuted by the regime, led by dictator Castro, she claims.
She added that Maradona once introduced her to Castro who put his arms around her and asked the footballer how he had met such a beautiful girl.
She claims Castro gave her a special dispensation to leave Cuba, which citizens were banned from doing at the time, to attend a Maradona commemorative match in Argentina.
The alleged victim told TV station América TeVe: ‘Diego introduced me to drugs when I was still 16.
‘It was the biggest mistake of my life.’
When she was taken to Maradona’s hotel in the seaside resort of Varadero, it was the first time she had ever even stepped inside a hotel.
At the time Cuban nationals were banned from doing so and she pretended to be Italian to get past security.
Mavys said she was greeted by Maradona’s agent Guillermo Cóppola who had come straight out of the shower.
‘I was scared because he was wearing just a towel, and I feared the worst, but a few minutes later, Maradona arrived,’ she added.
‘He talked a lot, and put me at ease. I liked him. He didn’t try it on. He invited me to join his family for dinner the next night at Palacio Dupont.’
Maradona had gone to Cuba in February 2000 to try and kick his cocaine habit after he went into a drug-induced coma and nearly died in Punta del Este, Uruguay a month earlier.
His ex-wife Claudia Villafañe joined him for the first month, but then returned to Argentina.
Maradona is rumoured to have fallen out with another Cuban girlfriend Laura Cibillo, prompting his entourage to find a new distraction for him which became Mavys.
He moved the blonde teenager into an apartment at La Pradera health centre in Havana.
‘My mother wasn’t happy about it, and neither was my father,’ she added ‘But at that age you tend to be rebellious and not listen to your parents.
‘Life with Maradona was really crazy. Parties, discos, he took me out for meals. I never thought I would get into drugs, which I found it so hard to get free of.
‘Diego introduced me to drugs when I was still 16.
‘Several times he tried to encourage me, he insisted, he felt alone, and I tried the cocaine to please him. It was the biggest mistake of my life.
‘It was really hard to get off the drugs. I had hallucinations. At one stage I had to go to hospital with dehydration, and I couldn’t even get out of bed to go to the toilet.
‘I tried to kick the cocaine but I couldn’t. It was a spiral when I did manage to get off the drugs I took refuge in alcohol.
‘After all these years I feel ashamed of myself, knowing I was 16, and I was part of all this. But it was another experience in my life. We don’t always choose what happens to us.
‘I was a girl. I wasn’t bad. He was a rich foreigner, and he picked me out. I couldn’t say no. It was a privilege to be his girl.’
At the time Cubans were forbidden to travel abroad, but the leader Fidel Castro gave Diego’s girlfriend, then aged 17, special permission to travel for the star’s testimonial match at Boca’s La Bombonera stadium in November 2001.
But Mavys said Diego’s other motive for the visit to Buenos Aires was to arrange for a breast enlargement operation in the South American city famous for its cosmetic surgeons.
She added: ‘I was scared of having the operation in Cuba in case it didn’t go well, and I developed an infection, so he decided to have me operated on in Argentina.
‘I went for 20 days but ended up staying for two and a half months.’
Maradona – who won the World Cup in 1986 had five legitimate children – Diego Jnr, 34, Dalma, 32, Giannina, 31, Jana, 23 and seven-year-old Diego Fernando.
But he also has seven others claiming they are his offspring as well. Damaris Maradona, 36, Magali Gil, 25, Eugenia Laprovittola, 25, Santiago Lara, 19 and the ‘Cuban Trio’ of Joana, Lu and Javielito.
Maradona died in November 2020 after a heart attack following brain surgery.
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