DOUBLE TROUBLE FOR ALBERTO
While former president Alberto Fernández has been indicted since February on charges of abusing his authority while in office to steer the juicy commissions for state insurance contracts in the direction of presidential cronies, telephone chats revealed this month have not only complicated him further on this legal front but also opened up a more personal scandal. The 472 pages of conversations taped from a mobile telephone belonging to his secretary not only include a dozen calls pointing to alleged influence-trafficking (clinching the commissions from Defence and Foreign Ministry insurance contracts for the broker Héctor Martínez Sosa his secretary’s husband) but also allegations by former first lady Fabiola Yáñez of being a battered wife while living at Olivos presidential residence, resulting in charges of gender violence and “psychological terrorism” formally lodged with federal judge Julián Ercolini last Tuesday – accusations which have since overtaken the corruption indictment in media coverage. The charges were made via Zoom since the former first lady is currently living in Madrid with two-year-old Francisco (the first baby ever born to a presidential couple in Olivos). The chats also include a marginal mention of ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, local media revealed.
MORENO SENTENCED FOR INDEC FALSIFICATION
The TOF(Tribunal Oral Federal) 2 court on Wednesday handed out a conditional prison sentence of three years to former Domestic Trade secretary Guillermo Moreno plus a six-year disqualification from public office for doctoring the data of Indec statistics bureau during the presidencies of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. He has already been sentenced twice for financing his “Clarín miente” (“Clarín lies”) campaign with state funds and for threatening behaviour during a business assembly of Papel Prensa newsprint company but neither sentence has been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Prosecutor Diego Luciani had requested a four-year sentence plus a 10-year disqualification from public office, charging that the poor were the chief victims of airbrushing inflation, while Moreno’s defence lawyer Graciana Peñafort had called for his acquittal. Former INDEC Consumer Price Index director Beatriz Paglieri was handed out an identical sentence to Moreno while two other former INDEC officials were acquitted.
CITY INFLATION TOPS 5%
Last month’s inflation in this capital was 5.1 percent, City Hall statisticians reported on Thursday, substantially higher than June’s 4.1 percent and the estimates of prívate consultants placing nationwide July inflation below four percent. This year’s inflation in the Capital Federal is thus already close to three digits at 98.5 percent after seven months with an annual inflation of 264.9 percent. Steep hikes in public service billing and seasonal rises for fruit and vegetables were considered the main culprits. In more detail, the price of services rose 6.3 percent as against 3.4 percent for goods while the highest increases were 11 percent for fruit and vegetables in an often cold winter,7.3 percent for healthcare and medicine and 5.7 percent for housing and fuel. The national figure for July will be announced next week.
BUS TRANSPORT CHANGES
As from next month the national government will be discontinuing subsidies to bus lines circulating in the AMBA Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, Transport Secretary Franco Mogetta informed Congress on Tuesday, with any future subsidies up to City Hall and the Buenos Aires provincial government. The government also deregulated urban transport by authorising the use of different means of electronic payment other than the SUBE card.
MURDER LESS FOUL
There were 10.6 percent less murders nationwide in the first half of this year than in the same period of 2023, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich announced last Tuesday, although slightly up in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.
MOBILES NON GRATA IN SCHOOLS
Buenos Aires City Mayor Jorge Macri last Thursday announced a crackdown on the use of mobile telephones in classrooms, describing the move as necessary to “recapture the attention” of students and “improve the quality of education.” The excessive use of electronics was a threat to concentration in class and social life during recreation alike, he insisted, describing the mobile telephone as a “machine for distraction,” adding: “Control of the classroom needs to return to the teachers, not the cell phone.” A total of 566,000 students in 2,291 public and prívate schools at both primary and secondary level in this city stand to fall under the new restriction which can only be relaxed when they “form part of a pedagogic activity planned and approved by [school] directors.” This resolution “takes into consideration the warning of the Argentine Pediatríc Society as to the risks implied by the excessive use of screens in the cognitive development of children … also based on the studies and experiences of different countries where the regulation of the use of mobile telephones has contributed to improving the learning processes of underperforming students.”
UNPICKING THE PACKAGE
The ‘Ley de gondolas’ obliging supermarkets to offer a full range of brands on their shelves, passed by Congress in late 2020 and repealed in the first month of the Javier Milei Presidency is to be revived at provincial level, according to a bill sent by Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof to the provincial legislature just before last weekend. A full diversity of products is to be binding for all supermarkets with an area over 300 square metres while all others are obliged to display at least three brands. All goods produced within the province are to be labelled “Producción Bonaerense.” Retailer reactions were mixed.
SAINT CAJETAN’S DAY MARKED
The feast day of Saint Cajetan with its traditional motto of “Peace, bread and work,” a focal point for the impoverished, was marked in midweek with thousands flocking to the Liniers church named after the 16th century Neapolitan saint. The procession was not purely religious but joined by opposition, trade union and picket leaders to express repudiation of government austerity policies.
BANK JOB THWARTED
A 200-metre tunnel to the vaults of a San Isidro branch of Banco Macro came within five metres of success before being discovered just in time last Thursday. In this case the robbers were stopped not by the police but by a food delivery driver who noticed a metal rod protruding out into the street and whose curiosity led to an investigation which frustrated the plan. It is believed that the heist was planned for next weekend with the bank closed. A video of the tunnel showed it to observe high standards of construction with wood panelling and even lighting. Mattresses were also found in the tunnel, pointing to night-time work by the gang starting last year. The robbers are believed to have covered their digging by posing as municipal maintenance workers. Investigators believe this heist to have been better planned and organised than the famous “Robo del Siglo” at the Acassuso branch of Banco Rio in 2006.
OLYMPIC SILVER
Mateo Majdalani and Eugenia Bosco clinched a silver medal for Argentina in last Thursday’s Medal Race off Marseille in mixed yachting in the Nacra 17 multihull category at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Thanks to their solid sailing in the preceding regattas, it was virtually impossible to miss out on a medal by Thursday, even with a substandard Medal Race (where they actually finished 7th of the 10 boats) with equally no chance of catching up with the runaway Italian leaders (New Zealand took the bronze). Should the hockey Leonas lift a bronze medal (in a match played after our press time), Argentina would thus have all the Olympic medal variants following the gold won by José ‘Maligno’ Torres Gil in BMX Freestyle last week.
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