Few people knew the grotesque José López any better than Cristina Kirchner
On Thursday, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner finally referred to a
case of corruption that happened on her watch. She never had beforehand,
not even with the indictments and even convictions imposed on some of
her aides — such as former Transport secretary Ricardo Jaime, her
vice-president Amado Boudou, the short-lived Economy minister Felisa
Miceli or the longer lasting Julio De Vido. In eight years at the helm,
the ex-president missed almost every opportunity to confront the scourge
of corruption or even to fire those suspected of corrupt practices. It
was only when a man who handled billion-dollar public works contracts
over 12 years was caught red-handed trying to hide several million
dollars before dawn in a Greater Buenos Aires convent that CFK openly
condemned embezzlement practices during her presidency.
“Nobody should pretend to be absent-minded,” the ex-president said in a public letter published on Thursday evening. Sounds sensible enough — but only if she includes herself. Few people other than herself could have know better the grotesque José López, who became Public Works secretary in 2003 after a long Patagonian “apprenticeship” under the wing of the Kirchners in Santa Cruz. The last two Argentine presidents kept a close watch on their officials, centralized decisions and followed the government’s numbers obsessively (especially Néstor Kirchner), but that did not prevent a State secretary from amassing a fortune in foreign currency without Pink House knowledge — that certainly poses multiple questions.
Along those lines, CFK herself could contribute to the investigation she demands, starting by sharing with the courts her evidence or intuitions about the origin of that mountain of dollars and euros found in General Rodríguez.
Federal prosecutor Federico Delgado, who has been investigating the suspected embezzlement of López for years, may ask the courts to summon the ex-president to testify in the next few days, but that by no means relinquishes the responsibilities of a democratic former president to society. CFK would have to explore unfamiliar ground and face questions (and follow-up questions) by press journalists and not actors or television hosts. And while she’s at it, the ex-president could have the chance to shed some light on the business ties of the Kirchner family with the detained contractor Lázaro Báez.
Former and current governors who worked side by side with López are today in a state of moral shock. José Alperovich of Tucumán (where López was a gubernatorial hopeful at one stage last year) — one of the districts receiving the most public works funds — is one of them and in no way free of suspicion. Another, with more favourable coverage by today’s pro-government press, is Salta’s Juan Manuel Urtubey, who these days never misses a photo op with Macri like he did with CFK until last year. A former secretary of culture with the hiper-corrupt Carlos Menem administration during its entire term who jumped to the other sidewalk during the Kirchnerite era declared his disappointment in the last hours.
More people have discovered indignation rather suddenly. For example, journalists who adopted a soft stance on the Federal Planning Ministry run by De Vido. It would be a mistake to assume that this group is limited to those bought up by Kirchnerism like a combo, good and bad together. In those years some unquestionably opposition-minded media and journalists, ideological enemies of the Kirchnerite governments, placed the ministry of De Vido and López under an opportunistic umbrella.
On Tursday, CFK pointed fingers to the “private sector.” The Kirchners were able to create their particular crony capitalism, with Lázaro Báez at the forefront, but the main counterparts of secretary López were major economic groups such as Techint, Electroingeniería, Iecsa (supposedly bought to Mauricio Macri by his cousin Ángelo Calcaterra), Eduardo Eurnekián’s Corporacion America and Brazil’s Odebrecht (whose main shareholder remains jailed in his country). CFK has a point — most powerful businessmen may enjoy of media and judicial immunity — but this does not excuse her government for the murky environment regarding public works, either with partners like Baez or Calcaterra.
The massive corruption under the conservative administration of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) ended up virtually unpunished except for some emblematic names. President Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001), also a conservative of the UCR party, bribed senators in order to approve a draconian labour bill but a federal cassation court buried the case as soon as last December, despite repentants and overwhelming evidence. With less fortune, several iconic Kirchnerites have faced charges and were even convicted in trials that started before CFK left office, and more will predictably be summoned by courts in the coming months.
This being the case, It would be reasonable to prevent risks for not grieving a new cycle of corruption in ten years. The prospects are not good — not only due to the old indicments for corruption or tax evasion against the president (controversial rulings eventually acquitted him) or pending cases related to current officials (Central Bank chief Federico Sturzenegger is one of them). Nothing worse than relaxing institutional watchdogs for a government with massive doses of conflict of interest, where former bank executives trade foreign debt, shareholders of energy companies lay out energy policy, businessmen are responsible for the commercial and industrial policies and advisors of banks accused of money laundering control money laundering. Within this framework, the Macri government decided that the Intelligence Secretariat resume its historical murky financial structure (barely improved last year) and the UIF unit to monitor money-laundering is degraded and placed under the umberlla of the Finance Ministry. Meanwhile, the Macrite Anti-Corruption Office (OA) acts as a prosecutor accusing the former government and as an public deffender of the current. And if all this were not enough, a president whose family, political and professional environment showed an overwhelming trend to invest in shell companies in Panama, Switzerland and the Bahamas, seeks to enact a whitewash law with minimum requirements and maximum secrecy. If the government knows about the problems and choses not to prevent them, then something is rotten in the state of Argentina.
@sebalacunza
“Nobody should pretend to be absent-minded,” the ex-president said in a public letter published on Thursday evening. Sounds sensible enough — but only if she includes herself. Few people other than herself could have know better the grotesque José López, who became Public Works secretary in 2003 after a long Patagonian “apprenticeship” under the wing of the Kirchners in Santa Cruz. The last two Argentine presidents kept a close watch on their officials, centralized decisions and followed the government’s numbers obsessively (especially Néstor Kirchner), but that did not prevent a State secretary from amassing a fortune in foreign currency without Pink House knowledge — that certainly poses multiple questions.
Along those lines, CFK herself could contribute to the investigation she demands, starting by sharing with the courts her evidence or intuitions about the origin of that mountain of dollars and euros found in General Rodríguez.
Federal prosecutor Federico Delgado, who has been investigating the suspected embezzlement of López for years, may ask the courts to summon the ex-president to testify in the next few days, but that by no means relinquishes the responsibilities of a democratic former president to society. CFK would have to explore unfamiliar ground and face questions (and follow-up questions) by press journalists and not actors or television hosts. And while she’s at it, the ex-president could have the chance to shed some light on the business ties of the Kirchner family with the detained contractor Lázaro Báez.
Former and current governors who worked side by side with López are today in a state of moral shock. José Alperovich of Tucumán (where López was a gubernatorial hopeful at one stage last year) — one of the districts receiving the most public works funds — is one of them and in no way free of suspicion. Another, with more favourable coverage by today’s pro-government press, is Salta’s Juan Manuel Urtubey, who these days never misses a photo op with Macri like he did with CFK until last year. A former secretary of culture with the hiper-corrupt Carlos Menem administration during its entire term who jumped to the other sidewalk during the Kirchnerite era declared his disappointment in the last hours.
More people have discovered indignation rather suddenly. For example, journalists who adopted a soft stance on the Federal Planning Ministry run by De Vido. It would be a mistake to assume that this group is limited to those bought up by Kirchnerism like a combo, good and bad together. In those years some unquestionably opposition-minded media and journalists, ideological enemies of the Kirchnerite governments, placed the ministry of De Vido and López under an opportunistic umbrella.
On Tursday, CFK pointed fingers to the “private sector.” The Kirchners were able to create their particular crony capitalism, with Lázaro Báez at the forefront, but the main counterparts of secretary López were major economic groups such as Techint, Electroingeniería, Iecsa (supposedly bought to Mauricio Macri by his cousin Ángelo Calcaterra), Eduardo Eurnekián’s Corporacion America and Brazil’s Odebrecht (whose main shareholder remains jailed in his country). CFK has a point — most powerful businessmen may enjoy of media and judicial immunity — but this does not excuse her government for the murky environment regarding public works, either with partners like Baez or Calcaterra.
The massive corruption under the conservative administration of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) ended up virtually unpunished except for some emblematic names. President Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001), also a conservative of the UCR party, bribed senators in order to approve a draconian labour bill but a federal cassation court buried the case as soon as last December, despite repentants and overwhelming evidence. With less fortune, several iconic Kirchnerites have faced charges and were even convicted in trials that started before CFK left office, and more will predictably be summoned by courts in the coming months.
This being the case, It would be reasonable to prevent risks for not grieving a new cycle of corruption in ten years. The prospects are not good — not only due to the old indicments for corruption or tax evasion against the president (controversial rulings eventually acquitted him) or pending cases related to current officials (Central Bank chief Federico Sturzenegger is one of them). Nothing worse than relaxing institutional watchdogs for a government with massive doses of conflict of interest, where former bank executives trade foreign debt, shareholders of energy companies lay out energy policy, businessmen are responsible for the commercial and industrial policies and advisors of banks accused of money laundering control money laundering. Within this framework, the Macri government decided that the Intelligence Secretariat resume its historical murky financial structure (barely improved last year) and the UIF unit to monitor money-laundering is degraded and placed under the umberlla of the Finance Ministry. Meanwhile, the Macrite Anti-Corruption Office (OA) acts as a prosecutor accusing the former government and as an public deffender of the current. And if all this were not enough, a president whose family, political and professional environment showed an overwhelming trend to invest in shell companies in Panama, Switzerland and the Bahamas, seeks to enact a whitewash law with minimum requirements and maximum secrecy. If the government knows about the problems and choses not to prevent them, then something is rotten in the state of Argentina.
@sebalacunza