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Don Francisco is like your TV tío playing the ringmaster every Saturday on Univision’s long running, Miami-filmed circus of Latin kitsch known as Sábado Gigante. But according to criminal complaints in his native Chile, he’s also a bribing deadbeat dad who tried to tamper with DNA evidence in a paternity suit.
Seventy-year-old Francisco, whose real name is Mario Kreutzberger, is the subject of a paternity suit. Forty-three-year-old Patricio Abraham Flores Mundaca claims that his mother once had an affair with the Spanish television icon while she was working as a maid at a hotel Francisco was staying. Nine months later, he alleges, he popped out.
Chile’s Medical Legal Service now claims that Francisco tried to bribe a laboratory worker to have DNA evidence in the paternity suit altered. Biochemist Luis Velazquez was allegedly offered the bribe by people who claimed to be close to Francisco.
Francisco has denied the claims, saying “I’ve never bribed anybody. I don’t know this Mr. Velazquez who came out in the press.”
Sábado Gigante is on temporary hiatus, reports UPI, as Francisco defends himself in court in Chile. It will be the first time in the show’s near 25-year-history when a new episode has not been broadcast on Saturday.
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