Daddy Yankee Is Suing a Spanish Businessman for $10 Million Over Defamation Claims He Says Were Designed to Poison His Jury Pool

Daddy Yankee’s Alleged $100 Million Fraud Case Against Estranged Wife Heads to Court in Puerto Rico 
Credit: Instagram/ @daddyyankee

Ramón Ayala, the Puerto Rican urban music icon known worldwide as Daddy Yankee, has filed a federal defamation lawsuit seeking $10 million against Spanish businessman León Fernando Fiksman in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The suit alleges that Fiksman made false and malicious statements about Ayala during a podcast interview published on January 14th, linking the artist to money laundering, the financial network of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Venezuelan political corruption, accusations that Ayala’s legal team describes as entirely fabricated and strategically timed to damage his reputation ahead of a jury trial.

The two men had already been facing each other in a separate legal dispute in Miami-Dade County since 2024, when Fiksman filed a lawsuit against Ayala, his then-wife Mireddys González and others over alleged fraud connected to a padel sports company in Florida. According to the federal complaint, that case is scheduled to go to jury trial beginning in August of this year, and Ayala’s legal team argues that the timing of Fiksman’s podcast appearance was deliberate, calculated to reach and influence prospective jurors before they were selected for the upcoming trial.

What Fiksman Said and Why Ayala Says It Was a Lie

During the January podcast interview, Fiksman spoke about the Miami-Dade dispute and claimed to have reviewed discovery materials from the case that supported his characterizations of Ayala’s conduct. He reportedly told the podcast audience that messages reviewed during the discovery process showed Ayala agreeing with statements suggesting that assets had been taken, and then summarized his position by linking the words money laundering, Chávez and Daddy Yankee together as his description of what the evidence showed.

Ayala’s federal complaint states that no such message exists. The filing argues that none of the documents, messages, communications or evidence produced during the discovery phase of the Miami-Dade lawsuit, nor any other material from any other source, supports what Fiksman told the podcast audience. The complaint goes further, alleging that Fiksman deliberately falsified or distorted the content of the discovery materials and cited a nonexistent message to lend false credibility to his accusations in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands of listeners. The filing states that Fiksman acted with actual malice, meaning he either knew his statements were false or proceeded with complete disregard for whether they were true.

Ayala’s legal team was also direct about the factual record, stating in the complaint that Ayala has no participation in or connection to money laundering, the financial network of Hugo Chávez or Venezuelan political corruption of any kind, and that Fiksman knew these accusations were false when he made them.

Why the Timing and the Audience Mattered

The federal lawsuit argues that the choice of venue for these statements was calculated rather than coincidental. Fiksman made his comments to a Spanish-language podcast audience of over 737,000 followers, many of whom the complaint suggests reside in South Florida or maintain close ties to the region. The filing points out that Miami-Dade County draws its jury pool from one of the most heavily Latino communities in the United States, with a substantial population of Venezuelan and Cuban descent, communities for whom accusations linking a public figure to Hugo Chávez’s financial networks and Venezuelan corruption culture carry a particularly visceral impact.

By reaching that specific audience with those specific accusations at that specific moment, Ayala’s legal team argues, Fiksman ensured that his false narrative would reach and resonate within the same community from which jurors would be selected for the Miami-Dade trial, inflicting maximum reputational damage while simultaneously contaminating the potential jury pool.

The State of Both Legal Battles

The Miami-Dade case, in which Fiksman originally alleged that he was forced out of a padel sports company at a devalued price causing him serious financial damages, suffered a meaningful setback in December when a judge excluded Fiksman’s expert witness, removing what Ayala’s federal complaint describes as the only mechanism through which Fiksman could attempt to quantify the losses he claims to have suffered. Ayala’s team characterizes the Miami-Dade claims as based on pure conjecture and argues that the podcast appearance was a direct response to that legal setback, an attempt to fight in the court of public opinion after losing ground in the actual courtroom.

The federal defamation case consists of three counts and seeks compensation of no less than $10 million for damages to Ayala’s reputation and the economic and emotional consequences that followed. The case has been assigned to Judge José E. Martínez in federal court. The Miami-Dade jury trial is scheduled to begin in August, meaning both proceedings will be active simultaneously in the months ahead.

For Image credit or remove please email for immediate removal - info@belatina.com