President Javier Milei has appointed lawyer and professor Santiago María Castro Videla as Argentina’s new Treasury attorney-general, a position tasked with counselling and representing the state in legal matters.
He replaces Rodolfo Barra, who was asked to resign his post by the government at the tail end of last week.
He had reportedly angered Milei administration officials by issuing a ruling that ran contrary to the government’s budget-slashing approach to public spending.
According to government sources cited by the Noticias Argentinas news agency, the Treasury attorney general backed a Justice Ministry employee who had filed a legal petition challenging a decision related to salaries and employee incentives.
The decision angered the government, though other sources said the Casa Rosada was unhappy at the amount of time Barra spent in Argentina. He has a home in Spain and travels frequently to Punta del Este in Uruguay, they said.
Castro Videla, 43, is a lawyer specialised in administrative, constitutional and procedural law. His appointment was confirmed by Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni at a press conference on Tuesday.
Milei reportedly sought to appoint Ricardo Manuel Rojas, a lawyer and doctor in economic history, as Barra’s replacement but he turned down the role.
Adorni highlighted that the incoming official – said to be a disciple of Rojas – "has been guest professor at the Austral University for the last 15 years and is the author of books and dozens of books and academic articles.”
“The Treasury attorney has to defend the interests of the nation and Rodolfo Barra’s time was effectively up, so that the President believes that the best person to cover that post today is no longer Rodolfo Barra but Santiago María Castro Videla,” said Adorni.
“It was simply a decision of the President taken last week and there is not much more to explain than that. Indeed, Rodolfo Barra himself has thanked the President,” ge added.
The new Treasury attorney belongs to the Bianchi, Galarce & Castro Videla Abogados law firm and works at the Treasury Attorney Office’s school for lawyers.
He has authored several books, including El derecho de propiedad privada y libertad económica y los controles de precios máximos (“The right to private property, economic freedom and price controls”), El derecho a la vida y la ‘píldora del día después’. Reflexiones a partir de una sentencia de la Corte Suprema Argentina (“The right to life and the “morning after pill,” reflections on a Supreme Court ruling”) and La delegación legislativa y el Estado regulatorio (“Legislative delegation and the regulatory state”).
Barra’s ousting
Barra, a lawyer with considerable experience, held several government posts in the 1990s, but his return to frontline politics sparked great controversy.
A former justice of the Supreme Court, he served as justice minister from 1994 to 1996 under then-president Carlos Menem before an investigation uncovered links to pro-Nazi groups and highlighted anti-Semitic claims.
He was forced to resign amid public outcry that ensued after a photo of him as a teenager, with his arm outstretched in a Nazi-style salute, was published by Noticias news magazine.
His efforts to apologise away the fact he was a member of an ultranationalist, allegedly anti-Semitic movement as a youth, failed.
While serving as justice minister for then-president Carlos Menem, then-economy minister Domingo Cavallo even accused Barra of delaying investigations into the terrorist attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Israeli-Argentine Association Jewish community centre.
His appointment to the Treasury post in December 2023, tasked with counselling and representing the state in legal matters, met with dismay from civic associations.
Opposition politicians urged Milei to reconsider but the La Libertad Avanza leader refused to back down.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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