If misery loves company, so does scandal, it would seem. The undeclared US$211,000 transported between two neighbouring countries by Peronist Senator Edgardo Kueider have been followed by other outrages such as the extravagantly freaky 60th birthday party of prosecutor Ramiro González, outshining (although only due to its psychedelic intensity) recent disclosures as to the Miami real-estate wealth of PRO lower house caucus chief Cristian Ritondo – all in his wife’s name, of course. Signs that corruption is regaining prominence as a major issue with inflation now down to almost “crawling peg” levels after the 2.4 percent posted for last month in midweek. But also carrying suspicions that the other scandals might not have emerged without the first and that each case is a selectively chosen tip of an iceberg within its sphere.
The sums of money in Kueider’s car – the US$211,000 plus 600,000 pesos, the latter a pretty reasonable amount for an extended outing, the former considerably less so, along with reportedly a pendrive containing cryptocoins – pale against the US$9 million tossed over a convent wall by Kirchnerite ex-official José López in mid-2016 but it is a comparable scandal in terms other than the quantitative.
Firstly, it is a national disgrace that foreign intervention should be required to reveal this scam – since Argentine Customs have no place on the international bridge linking Brazil and Paraguay where the currency contraband was detected, it must be asked what they were doing all the times the senator was presumably channelling money into a Paraguayan ghost company.
And secondly, it is a scandal splashing most of the political spectrum. By highlighting the Frente de Todos “Alberto/Cristina” ballots electing Kueider to the upper house in 2019, the government is seeking to pin all the discredit on a Kirchnerism facing the uncomfortable question of why corruption in Argentina so often begins with the letter “K” – the reaction of the Unión por la Patria caucus has been to push Kueider’s expulsion harder than anybody else (especially with a La Cámpora militant as his elected substitute). But depicting Kueider as a pure Kirchnerite will not wash – not only has he delivered some key votes in the past year to keep the Milei government legislatively alive (the source of his greenbacks, as the malicious suggest?) but he was also star spin doctor Santiago Caputo’s nominee to chair the bicameral intelligence commission (even if intelligence would not appear Kueider’s strong suit, judging from his zero smuggling technique and not even bothering to line up a fake address, contact details and board of directors for the Paraguayan phantom company).
Beyond entering into the multi-million costs of the insanely overblown birthday party or the details of the Ritondo couple’s Miami flats, it is striking that all these scandals centre on a single face for misdeeds extending to an entire “caste” (to use President Javier Milei’s pet term). Although not the only cloud hanging over him, Ritondo is perhaps most notorious for being a leading figure in the lobby defending the tax breaks extended to the Sarandí tobacco company (on the grounds that they are a small firm even though they corner almost 40 percent of the market). But Ritondo (who did not acquire his Miami property yesterday) is not the only member of that lobby – when the issue arose in the clause-by-clause second reading of the omnibus bill, 77 deputies voted to maintain the tax breaks with 69 more abstaining and only 82 in favour of removing this privilege. As for Kueider, sufficient grounds have been found to investigate no less than 29 of the 72 senators for corruption, so why just him?
One common denominator between Ritondo and González is that both are linked to ex-president Mauricio Macri – the former obviously so as PRO caucus chief and the latter for letting Macri’s cousin Angelo Calcaterra off the hook by tamely accepting the construction tycoon’s plea that his bribes paid to Kirchnerism were really voluntary campaign contributions. So could these scandals be part of the government’s master plan to squeeze PRO out of the midterms in favour of polarising against Kirchnerism?
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