She is best known for being the Director of Hearings in the presidential administration of her then brother-in-law Carlos Menem, and for being charged in the drug money laundering scandal which came to be called Yomagate.
[5] At the president's direction, several attempts were made to grant her some political function, one of which was denied by Guido di Tella, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Yoma also called the FrePaSo deputy Graciela Fernández Meijide to request that her return to power not be fiercely criticized by the opposition.
[5] After several years with a low profile, Yoma returned to the government in August 1998, when she was appointed as an advisor to the White Helmets Commission for six months.
[5] The government justified this appointment, which she celebrated on Legrand's program on 18 August 1998 and which carried a monthly salary of 1,730 pesos, based on her mastery of Arabic.
In the 1990s, Cali Cartel accountant Ramón Humberto Puentes was arrested in Punta del Este at the request of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, on suspicion of smuggling cocaine into Uruguay.
[11] In several successive trips Amira Yoma moved to Uruguay a quantity of money impossible to quantify, hidden in the doors and body of a Peugeot 505 gray color truck.On 1 March 1991, the Spanish magazine Cambio 16 published that Judge Garzón was investigating figures of power very close to Carlos Menem, including Amira Yoma, Ibrahim al Ibrahim, and Mario Caserta, Undersecretary of Public Services.
According to an informant, the job of Yoma and Ibrahim was to pick up suitcases of money in New York and take them to Buenos Aires as sealed baggage, where they were then collected and taken to Uruguay.
[13] Her case would eventually be dismissed by the Argentine court in April 1994 at the request of the prosecutor Carlos Stornelli and recorded by chamber secretary Gabriel Cavallo [es],[14] despite the fact that the Spanish justice system continued with the international arrest warrant.
[19]Amira Yoma currently runs a Middle Eastern restaurant in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Belgrano with her husband, former journalist Jorge "Chacho" Marchetti.