Argentina's Senate has voted to eject Entre Ríos Senator Edgardo Kueider from the Upper House amid corruption claims, branding the Unidad Federal lawmaker “morally unfit” in the process.
The dramatic ousting, which took place Thursday, came just eight days after Kueider was arrested at the frontier between Paraguay and Brazil carrying vast undeclared sums of money, including over US$200,000 in cash.
The 52-year-old, who was elected to office on a Peronist ticket but has since grown closer to the ruling La Libertad Avanza party, was expelled by an overwhelming majority in a 60-6 vote with just one abstention.
The original vote was 61-5 but the Corrientes senator Carlos Mauricio ‘Camau’ Espínola – who shares the Federal Peronist caucus of the now ex-senator – requested permission to rectify his vote in Kueider’s favour.
Earlier in the day, Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado requested that the Entre Ríos senator be stripped of his parliamentary immunity so that she could order his arrest.
In an interview with the La Nación daily on Thursday, Kueider again denied money-laundering, corruption or smuggling.
Speaking before the decision to eject him from the Senate, which he described as “unheard-of,” Kueider complained that “his version of the facts” had not been heard.
“They are violating constitutional principles such as the constitutional right to legitimate self-defence,” said the former senator, describing current events as “institutional madness.”
‘They are saying that they took all the money out of my backpack and that is not so, that is false, it is a lie,’ he said.
In his opinion, the Senate should not “take a punitive measure, let alone an expulsion, because of a presumption.”
Background
The ousted senator was elected on the victorious Frente de Todos ticket in 2019 but has voted with some consistency in favour of Javier Milei’s libertarían government in the past year, even being tipped to head the bicameral intelligence commission by star spin doctor Santiago Caputo. This did not save him from having the entire La Libertad Avanza caucus voting to eject him last Thursday.
The half dozen votes in his favour came from three PRO senators, one Radical (Maximiliano Abad of Buenos Aires Province) and a dissident Peronist later joined by Espinola while Salta’s Juan Carlos Romero (a former three-term pro-Menem Peronist governor) abstained with five senators absent.
On Monday Kueider had formally requested a temporary leave of absence in a letter addressed to Vice-President Victoria Villarruel but little good did it do him because the Unión por la Patria caucus had already presented a bill requesting his expulsion.
Indicted by Paraguayan tax authorities for money-laundering and contraband of currency, Kuider is currently under house arrest in the capital city of Asunción together with his 34-year-old secretary Iara Magdalena Guinsel Costa. With their passports retained, they have no immediate prospect of return to Argentina.
PROCLAC (Procuraduría de Criminalidad Económica y Lavado de Activos) money-laundering watchdogs have opened a preliminary investigation to collect evidence and determine if there is enough to mount formal criminal charges of embezzlement, accusations which the Peronist senator has already faced at both federal and provincial level in the province of Entre Ríos, which he represented until now.
Kueider has denied that the money is his, with Guinsel Costa admitting to its ownership “to do business with a company based in Paraguay,” identified as Golden Sur (Golsur).
Reports on Thursday suggested the senator may remain detained in Paraguay for as long as four months as the investigation into alleged criminal wrongdoing continues.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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