An Argentine health insurance company has admitted that medical tests presented at the trial over the death of football icon Diego Maradona were in fact those of his father, also called Diego. In a letter seen by AFP on Monday, Swiss Medical said the results it released to a medical commission investigating the death “remained mistakenly filed under the name Diego Armando Maradona” when they belonged to Diego Salustiano Maradona.
The older Maradona died in 2015, five years before the man considered one of football’s greatest ever players. The blunder was spotted last week by a lawyer defending one of the seven healthcare professionals on trial over Maradona’s death in November 2020 at the age of 60.
Maradona died of heart failure and acute pulmonary edema — a condition in which fluid accumulates in the lungs — at a rented home in the Buenos Aires suburb of Tigre, two weeks after undergoing surgery for a brain clot. His medical team is accused of providing grossly inadequate care in the lead-up to his death and denies the charges.
His kidney health has been a core focus of the final stages of the trial, with a nephrologist testifying that his doctors should have paid more attention to the issue. That analysis was based on the wrong test results.
The mix-up led to the suspension of proceedings for a week, causing further embarrassment for the court after the collapse last year of a first trial over a conflict of interest involving one of the judges. The latest trial, which began in April, resumes Thursday and is expected to continue until at least September.
