Stories that caught our eye: October 17 to 24

AT LONG LAST: MIDTERMS

The midterm elections to choose 127 deputies nationwide and 24 senators (three each in this city, Chaco, Entre Ríos, Neuquén, Río Negro, Salta, Santiago del Estero and Tierra del Fuego) will be held tomorrow with 35,394,425 citizens qualified to vote. President Javier Milei held closing rallies in Córdoba on Tuesday and Rosario on Thursday while cancelling his agenda in Buenos Aires Province but the veda electoral curfew in force today stands in the way of giving further details on the final week of campaigning by either the ruling or opposition parties.

RESHUFFLE BEGINS EARLY, MINISTERS QUIT

Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein resigned Monday with Finance Secretary Pablo Quirno announced as his successor on Thursday. Werthein’s exit had been widely rumoured ever since President Javier Milei’s awkward White House meeting with his United States counterpart Donald Trump on October 14, when Washington’s financial assistance came across as contingent on electoral success. Werthein was also reportedly uncomfortable with the imminent entry of star spin doctor Santiago Caputo into the Cabinet. The minister fell just one week short of a year in office after replacing Diana Mondino last October. Quirno is extremely close to his boss until now, Economy Minister Luis Caputo, serving as his Cabinet Chief when Caputo was Finance Minister in the Mauricio Macri administration in 2017 and then moving to the Central Bank board of governors when Caputo became Central Bank chief in 2018. Meanwhile Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona confirmed himself as being all but out of the Cabinet although his resignation will not be formally presented until Monday after the midterms are over. Justice Secretary Sebastián Amerio (close to Santiago Caputo) is tipped to replace him as his second-in-command although General Pueyrredón (Mar del Plata) Mayor Guillermo Montenegro is more than a dark house, possibly merging the portfolio with the Security Ministry if given the nod. 

TRUMP’S HELPING HAND

United States President Donald Trump’s not always helpful assistance continued at the start of this electoral week – last weekend Trump revealed that he was considering buying Argentine beef to bring down US prices, justifying the move to potentially irate local ranchers by saying: “They are dying in that country” while on Monday Argentina and the United States confirmed signature of a currency swap for US$20 billion to guarantee payment of the national debt and to “contribute to macro-economic stability in Argentina … reinforcing monetary policy to respond to episodes of volatility.” No further details accompanied the announcement. Trump justified mooting the possibility of opening up the US market to Argentine beef by saying: “Argentina is fighting for its life. They have no money, they have nothing, they’re struggling very hard to survive. I like Argentina’s president. I think he’s trying to do the best he can.” On Thursday the US Department of Agriculture translated Trump’s words into action by quadrupling the quota to purchase Argentine beef from 20,000 to 80,000 tons (out of a total US consumption of 12 million tons, of which 10 million is locally produced).

LAWS IN LIMBO

The government promulgated the laws of paediatric emergency and university financing last Tuesday, the last possible date, after Congress had overridden the presidential vetoes earlier this month but suspended their application until the parliamentarians clarified their financing and added the funding to the 2026 Budget – the same arguments applied last month to the law declaring an emergency for the disabled. The two laws seek to improve the financing of the Garrahan Children’s Hospital and public universities in general while updating the pay of academic and health personnel in particular. The government considered the university bill as fiscally unviable as costing over a trillion pesos this year and over two trillion next while the bill for the paediatric emergency was considerably less at under 200 billion pesos but the government argued that this could leave other health programmes underfunded. The CONADU union grouping university lecturers held a 24-hour nationwide strike the next day in protest while Garrahan workers launched their 24-hour strike the same morning.

CAPUTO KEPT BUSY

Economy Minister Luis Caputo stayed in the news last week, meeting at his Ministry yesterday with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, 69 (here since Wednesday for the bank’s global forum, in this city this year with Tony Blair, Britain’s Labour prime minister between 1997 and 2007, another star turn) at the height of pre-electoral market volatility while spending much of his time denying that there would be any change in the current monetary scheme of the dollar floating within currency bands, in force since agreed last April with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Caputo was joined in his meeting with Dimon by President Javier Milei. JP Morgan is the world’s biggest bank with an asset worth of US$4 trillion. Meanwhile The Wall Street Journal published an article saying that the conversations between Caputo and his United States counterpart, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, included expanding the access of US companies to Argentina’s uranium resources at China’s expense as a condition for US assistance – contrary to the Casa Rosada’s previous denials.

CRYPTO-FRAUD NOT GOING AWAY

Jennifer Rochon, federal judge for the Southern District of New York in the United States, last Monday knocked back the request of four international hedge funds for authorisation to seek evidence linking the Argentine state to the millions made by the cryptocurrency ‘$LIBRA’ while not ruling out that President Javier Milei, Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei or the US businessman Hayden Davis, creator of the memecoin, could have been beneficiaries. Nevertheless, her 33-page ruling concluded that “the evidence does not permit it to be sustained that the Argentine Republic currently owns the assets (i.e. the cryptocurrency earnings).” Rochon expressed her suspicion that the plaintiffs were on a “fishing trip” looking for any state assets to which they could lay claim as creditors from Argentina’s 2001 default. She further quoted a report of the Anti- Corruption Office concluding that Milei’s participation in the promotion of the cryptocurrency should be considered a personal, not an official activity.

TELEFE CHANGES HANDS

The sale of television channel Telefe to Gustavo Scaglione (a businessman close to 2023 Peronist presidential candidate Sergio Massa) for US$104 million was reported to be imminent at press time. At one point the group of the family of the now ex-minister Gerardo Werthein had been in the running.

FABIOLA’S LAWYERS QUIT

Mariana Gallego and Mauricio D’Alessandro, the defence lawyers of former first lady Fabiola Yáñez in her gender violence case against ex-president Alberto Fernández, stepped down last Thursday on the grounds that her recent return to the country had rendered their activities “abstract.”

SCIENTIST’S MYSTERIOUS DEATH

CONICET researcher and university teacher Alejandro Fracaroli, 44, was found dead in a stream in a wooded zone of the German city of Karlsruhe last Sunday after going missing for six days. Apart from being a personal tragedy, his death is considered an enormous loss for Argentine science, in particular within his specialisations of nanotechnology and organic chemistry. At the time of his death he had been researching nanoscopic fabrics with industrial applications at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, a European leader in science and engineering, since August 26. He had previously worked in Berkeley (California) and Japan, apart from the University of Córdoba where he taught. The circumstances of his death are under investigation although the main theory continues to be an accident.

COP ACCUSED OF TEARGASSING CHILD

Federal Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano last Thursday called for Federal Police officer Cristian Rivaldi to be tried for “deliberately” tear-gassing 10-year-old Fabrizia Pegoraro and the child’s mother Carla Pegoraro during the weekly protest march on behalf of pensioners outside Congress last September 11. Rivaldi assured that he had not spotted the child among the demonstrators, adding that if he had, he would have removed her in order to avoid injury.

LIBERTARIAN IN BLAZING ARGUMENT

Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Contreras, 51, elected last month as the top candidate on the La Libertad Avanza list for municipal councillors in San Vicente, was arrested last Sunday and accused of firing at least two gunshots during an argument with his partner, Agustina Jiménez (24). There was no immediate comment from the nationally ruling party.

ALMOST CHAMPS, MESSI STAYS

Argentina’s Under-20 football squad fell at the last hurdle in last Sunday’s World Cup final in Chile, losing 2-0 to Morocco (both of whose goals came from Yassir Zabiri in the first half). In other football news, superstar Lionel Messi has renewed his contract with Inter Miami until the end of 2028 when he will be 41. Messi has scored 71 goals for the Florida team since joining them in mid-2023.