The Cult Dossier · No. 149 · Commercial / Therapy / Lgat
Buenos Aires Yoga School
Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires; BAYS
c.1980s – 2022 · Buenos Aires, Argentina; USA
XIII. FILLING THE GAPS — ASIA, AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA
Contested — presents as a philosophical school
Who led it
JUAN PERCOWICZ (b. c.1938).
What it worshipped and taught
Presented as a school of philosophy and yoga promising happiness and self-realisation, though prosecutors allege it taught no actual yoga. Argentine prosecutors charged that female members were directed into sexual relationships with wealthy and politically connected men in order to obtain money and influence for the organisation, and that the proceeds were laundered.
Who was in it
Juan Percowicz; 19 people indicted in 2022; the Argentine federal prosecutors; Human Rights Without Frontiers and several scholars of religion, who argue the case is a wrongful prosecution of a minority spiritual group.
How it ended, or where it stands
FOUR YEARS ON, NOTHING IS SETTLED. Committal for trial was annulled in December 2023 for want of any victim in a position of vulnerability; three of the leadership were charged again in May 2026 on the opposite view. No trial, no convictions.
The dead
—
Of note
GENUINELY CONTESTED and included with that flag prominent. Argentine prosecutors describe a trafficking and laundering operation; a body of religious-liberty scholars and NGOs argue the members are consenting adults and that the case is a moral panic dressed as a trafficking prosecution. No verdict exists. Both readings are on the record and neither has been tested at trial — and the Argentine courts themselves have now taken both positions, the appeal chamber finding no trafficking in 2023 and the investigating judge charging it again in 2026.
Its timeline
- c.1980s Founded in Buenos Aires; operates for over 30 years.
- August 2022 Federal raids; 19 people INDICTED for illicit association, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, money laundering and smuggling.
- 2022 Percowicz, then 84, granted house arrest.
- November 2022 An appeals chamber CONFIRMS the prosecutions of Percowicz and 16 others and orders a 1.2 billion peso asset freeze.
- 7 DECEMBER 2023 THE CASE COLLAPSES BACK TO THE START, WHICH THIS FILE PREVIOUSLY DID NOT RECORD. Sala II of the federal appeals chamber ANNULS THE COMMITTAL FOR TRIAL of all 17 accused, holding that the people named as victims had not been in a position of vulnerability: a Cuerpo MÉDICO FORENSE report found they had acted throughout with free self-determination. Defence lawyers move for dismissals.
- 8 MAY 2026 JUDGE MARÍA SERVINI CHARGES THREE OF THE LEADERSHIP ANYWAY — MARCELO GUERRA PERCOWICZ, MARÍA BEATRIZ BUGARI and MARIANO KRAWCZYK — with belonging to an illicit association for aggravated human trafficking, over seven alleged victims, and with money laundering, ordering embargoes of 1.2 billion pesos on two of them. SHE EXPRESSLY DEPARTS FROM THE APPEAL CHAMBER’S CONCLUSION THAT THERE WAS NO TRAFFICKING.
- AS AT 16 SEPTEMBER 2026 NO ORAL TRIAL HAS BEEN SET AND NO VERDICT HAS BEEN RETURNED.